Canada's recent ruling that Iran had deliberately shot down a Ukrainian Boeing with Canadians on board and, therefore, committed a terrorist attack, is contradictory as it fails to account for the fact that there had been Iranian passengers on the crashed aircraft as well, experts from Rome-based legal firm International Lawyers Associates told Sputnik
BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd May, 2021) Canada's recent ruling that Iran had deliberately shot down a Ukrainian Boeing with Canadians on board and, therefore, committed a terrorist attack, is contradictory as it fails to account for the fact that there had been Iranian passengers on the crashed aircraft as well, experts from Rome-based legal firm International Lawyers Associates told Sputnik.
On Friday, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled that Iran had deliberately downed Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752 in 2020, making the incident an act of terrorism under the Criminal Code of Canada. Flight PS752 crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran's international airport on January 8, 2020, after being shot down by the Iranian military. The incident claimed the lives of all 167 passengers � mostly Canadians and Iranians � and nine Ukrainian crew members.
According to Alexandro Maria Tirelli and Maria Valentina Miceli, the terrorist attack hypothesis is "contradictory" in this case, "because more than 80 passengers were Iranians."
"In any case, there is no exhaustive answer to this question: to establish whether a fact is an act of terrorism, one must look at the specific case, taking into account the specific circumstances, the author and the recipient of the message, as well as the context in which the act is committed," the experts said.
Tehran has maintained that the plane was shot down accidentally rather than deliberately. Iran's Civil Aviation Organization concluded last month that the plane was mistaken for a hostile target, as the country's military was expecting a tense standoff with the United States at the time and, therefore, on high alert.
The plane was shot down shortly after Iranian military fired missiles at two US bases in Iraq in retaliation for the drone strike that killed top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. However, court in Canada argued that there was no armed conflict in the region at the moment of the plane crash.
According to the lawyers, the consequences of the Canadian court's ruling will be "purely political." In more exact terms, it "only risks to compromise the relationship between the two states."
The Canadian court ordered Iran to compensate the plaintiffs for legal costs. But, in the absence of an international treaty binding both Iran and Canada, Tehran "won't accept the Canadian sentence and it won't execute its sanctions," the experts believe.
There is a possibility of international arbitration, the lawyers said, but only if both Canada and Iran agree to to it.
