Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) has started to pay compensations to the families of the passengers who were killed in the crash of a Boeing 737 in Tehran, UIA President Yevhen Dykhne told Interfax-Ukraine.
“The first part of compensations has been paid to certain passengers’ [families]. This procedure is not so fast, but it has to be completed,” he said.
Dykhne also noted that the issue raises more and more concern in terms of responsibility of the Iranian side.
“It is unpleasant to state that today we are facing a dead end with regard to the technical investigation which was conducted in Iran. They did not pass the flight data recorders to any laboratories, there are no reports on the completion of the investigation, as well as no information about successful intergovernmental agreements regarding payment of compensations by Iran,” he said.
Earlier, Foreign Minister of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba said that Ukraine has requested official explanations from Tehran about a statement made by an Iranian parliamentarian, who said that the Iranian military “did their job well” by downing the UIA airliner in January.
As reported, Hassan Norouzi, the representative of the Iranian Parliament’s Legal and Judicial Affairs Committee, said that the Iranian military did their job well by downing a civilian airliner of UIA in January.
“The military forces carried out their duties well… The movement of the plane was very suspicious,” he said in an interview with Hamdeli daily, Al Arabiya reported.
A Boeing 737-800 of Ukraine International Airlines crashed in the vicinity of Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport soon after takeoff on January 8. None of the 167 passengers and nine crewmembers survived the crash. There were eleven citizens of Ukraine, 82 citizens of Iran, 73 of Canada, ten of Sweden, four of Afghanistan, three of Germany, and three of the United Kingdom on board the plane.
Iranian authorities acknowledged on January 11, that the Boeing was downed by the Iranian military by mistake. Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Aerospace Forces Amir Ali Hajizadeh assumed full responsibility for the crash of the Ukrainian plane.
Iran proposed to pay a compensation of $80,000 for the families of each Ukrainian killed in the air crash, however the Ukrainian side that the amount was not enough and promised to strive for bigger compensations.
