Iran to pay families over plane crash

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s cabinet has created a compensation fund to pay the families of the 176 victims of a Ukrainian passenger plane that was shot down by Iranian forces outside Tehran last January, the president announced Wednesday.

Iran will pay $150,000 for each victim, state TV reported, without specifying a timeline for the awards. It comes as the families of victims prepare to mark the anniversary of the Jan. 8 crash and diplomats from nations that lost citizens push Iran for more co-operation on the investigation and compensation issues.

There was no immediate comment on Iran’s announcement from the five countries, including Canada, that are in talks with Iran about reparations.

Those killed included dozens of Canadian citizens and permanent residents, and many others with ties to Canadian universities.

For days, Iran denied that its military was responsible for the downing of the plane. But with extensive evidence emerging from Western intelligence reports and international pressure building, Iran admitted that its military had mistakenly fired at the Ukrainian jetliner at a moment of heightened tension between Iran and the United States. Hostilities had reached a fever pitch the week before over the American drone strike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad, raising fears of further violence in the region.

Western intelligence officials and analysts believe Iran shot down the aircraft with a Russian-made Tor system, known to NATO as the SA-15. Tehran blamed “human error” for the shoot-down, saying in a report released over the summer that those manning a misaligned surface-to-air missile battery wrongly identified the civilian flight as a threat and opened fire twice without getting approval from ranking officials.