The Iranian authorities on Monday ruled out compensating the victims of the Ukraine International Airlines plane that was shot down shortly after taking off from Tehran on January 8 because the aircraft “had Ukrainian and European insurance”.
At a press conference, the head of the Iranian Supreme Council of Insurance, Gholamreza Soleimani, said that “if a payment is to be made in this regard” it must be “made by the companies that covered the aircraft”, according to information from the IRNA news agency.
In this sense, he added that the plane that was shot down “was insured by Ukrainian and European companies and, therefore, they are the ones who must pay for the damages”. Furthermore, he insisted that the Iranian insurance companies “had nothing to do with the accident”.
The Boeing 737 was shot down near Tehran shortly after the start of flight PS752 from Tehran to Kiev, killing 176 people. At first, Iranian authorities said it was a technical problem, but days later they admitted it was shot down by several missiles launched by “mistake” by the Revolutionary Guard due to a communication problem with a military unit.
However, the Iranian Foreign Ministry had agreed last month, at least in principle’, to compensate the Ukrainian Government for the damage caused, although it stressed that there were some technical and legal problems that needed to be addressed.
For its part, Ukraine has indicated that analysis of the aircraft’s ‘black boxes’ – which were sent to France – confirms that there was ‘illegal interference with the flight plan’.
By Notimerica
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