For families of victims, justice will be elusive

OTTAWA—“Closure, transparency, accountability and justice.”

That’s what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canadians were looking for in light of revelations that Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 was likely downed, possibly by accident, by an Iranian surface-to-air missile.

“I want answers,” Trudeau said in Ottawa, calling on Iran to allow for a thorough investigation. “… And this government will not rest until we get that.”

But what leverage does Canada have to force Tehran to co-operate? And what might “justice” for the victims and families look like?

According to legal and international relations experts, answers — and justice — will be far from easy to obtain.

“This is a really tricky spot, because there’s just really few levers that Canada can pull here that will have any kind of quick response,” said Leah West, a professor at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and a former national security lawyer.

Canada could take the matter to the International Court of Justice, as Iran did in the 1980s and ’90s, after the U.S. shot down an Iranian passenger jet in 1988. That case ended in a settlement in 1996, with the U.S. government agreeing to pay $61.8 million (U.S.) to victims’ families. But that would be an “option of last resort,” West said.

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“That would be an option if there continues to be that evidence that supports the running theory that Iran accidentally shot the plane down and a complete investigation into what happened is not done,” West said in an interview. Canada’s Transportation Safety Board announced Thursday its investigators have been invited by Iran to visit the accident site and are preparing to travel to Tehran.

While multiple investigations run their course, the question of blame — and therefore justice — is premature, according to Roland Paris, an international affairs professor at the University of Ottawa.

Instead, the critical question is whether the Iranian government permits a thorough investigation of the crash site and accepts any responsibility for the crash.

“That’s going to be a very difficult decision for a regime that has faced violent popular protests, a decision to accept the likely finding that it accidentally killed Iranian civilians in a civilian plane,” Paris, a former adviser to Trudeau, said.

“At this stage, establishing the facts are really the most important thing, and that moving into a discussion of justice, of judicial consequences, is premature. The goal now is to persuade the Iranian government is to permit all the facts to be collected and rigorously analyzed.”

The key issue after those investigations run their course is restitution for the families of the victims, said Fen Hampson, the director of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton.

“(But) I wouldn’t be under any illusions that that’s going to be an easy sell to the Iranians, because right now it looks like they’re not willing to … admit culpability beyond returning bodies and allowing some kind of access to the crash site,” Hampson said.

Does Canada have much leverage to ensure some measure of justice for those who lost loved ones?

“The short answer is no,” Hampson said.

“But I think the fact that both (U.S. President Donald) Trump and Trudeau both said that this was a mistake … they’re leaving the Iranians enough wiggle room to come clean and say yes it was indeed a mistake.”

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