Bereaved Iranian couple sues top officials over jet downing

An Iranian couple has filed a rare lawsuit against three senior officials over the deaths of their children in the 2020 downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane, a newspaper reported Monday. The jet was shot down shortly after take-off from Tehran's Imam Khomeini airport on January 8, killing all 176 people on board, mostly Iranians and Canadians. Three days later, the Islamic republic's armed forces admitted to downing the Kyiv-bound Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 "by mistake", at a time of heightened tensions with arch foe the United States. Bereaved father Mohsen Assadi-Lari told reformist daily Shargh the lawsuits targeted Ali Shamkhani, Major General Hossein Salami and Brigadier General Amirali Hajizadeh. Shamkhani is the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Salami heads the elite Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Hajizadeh is commander of the Guards' aerospace force. "We have lodged a complaint against Shamkhani, Salami and Hajizadeh," said Assadi-Lari, a former director general of international affairs at the health ministry. He and his wife Zahda Majd, a university professor, lost their son Mohammad-Hossein, 23, and daughter Zeinab, 21, in the downing of the plane. On Monday, the Guards issued a message of condolences to the Assadi-Lari family on their Sepah News website from their leader. "While expressing his condolences to this dear family and to the other families of the martyrs... General Salami has said 'we will not spare any effort to ease the suffering of all families," said the message.<br/>