Canada, Ukraine, Sweden and the United Kingdom, united in a coalition for the victims of the 2020 Ukrainian plane downed in Iran, on Tuesday condemned the “sham trials” that led to the sentencing of 10 Iranian soldiers.

“The sham trials in Tehran must not distract the world from Iran’s failure to meet its international obligations and accept responsibility for its actions,” the four countries said in a joint statement.

On Sunday, ten Iranian soldiers were sentenced to between one and 10 years in prison for their role in the crash of Ukraine’s Boeing 760, which was shot down near Tehran in January 2020.

The crash, caused by two rockets fired by Iranian forces then on high alert amid fears of an American attack, claimed the lives of 176 people, mostly Iranians and Canadians, many of them dual nationals, and just 11 Ukrainians.

“Neither the trials nor the verdicts announced this week bring truth and justice to the families of the victims,” ​​lamented the coalition, deploring the Iranian judiciary’s “lack of the necessary impartiality and transparency” in this case.

“The Association of Victims’ Families does not recognize the courts of the Islamic regime as legitimate courts,” said this association of relatives of the victims on Twitter on Monday after the convictions were announced.

Last December, the coalition for the victims of the crash called on Tehran to submit to binding arbitration “to hold Iran responsible for the crash”.

Canada, Ukraine, Sweden and the United Kingdom had relied on the 1971 Montreal Convention governing civil aviation offenses to request this arbitration.

In early 2022, Iran said it had begun compensating some of the victims’ families, paying each “a sum of $150,000” and promising to compensate the others.

To see in the video