THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden and Ukraine launched a case against Iran in the United Nations’ highest court on Wednesday after a Ukrainian airline plane was shot down in 2020, killing 176 passengers and crew .

The four countries want the International Court of Justice to rule that Iran illegally shot down Ukraine International Airlines plane and urge Tehran to apologize and pay compensation to the families of the victims.

Flight PS752 was en route from Tehran to Kyiv on January 8, 2020 when it was shot down shortly after takeoff. Among those killed were nationals and residents of Canada, Sweden, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, as well as Afghanistan and Iran. Their ages ranged from 1 year to 74 years.

“The legal move completed today reflects our unwavering commitment to ensure transparency, justice and accountability for victims and their families,” the countries said in a joint statement on Wednesday. They said they filed the lawsuit after Iran failed to respond to a request for arbitration made in December.

After three days of denials in January 2020, Iran admitted that its paramilitary Revolutionary Guards accidentally shot down the Ukrainian plane with two surface-to-air missiles. Iranian authorities have accused an air defense operator of mistaking the Boeing 737-800 for a US cruise missile.

This year, an Iranian court sentenced an air defense commander allegedly responsible for the incident to 13 years in prison, the country’s official news agency said.

But the countries that took the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague called the lawsuits “a show trial and an opaque process.”

According to the document released on Wednesday, the United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden and Ukraine accuse Iran of “failing to take all possible measures to prevent the unlawful and intentional commission of a crime” and “failing to establish an impartial and conduct a transparent investigation”. and fair criminal investigations and prosecutions consistent with international law”.

Iran is said to have withheld or destroyed evidence, blamed other countries and subordinate Revolutionary Guards, “threatened and harassed the families of victims seeking justice” and failed to provide the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) with details of the incident.

The incident came on the same day that Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on US troops in Iraq in retaliation for a US drone strike that killed a senior Iranian general.

Last week, Iran filed a lawsuit against Canada over the incident, accusing the country of violating state immunity by allowing relatives of terror victims to seek compensation from the Islamic Republic.