Iran makes arrests in plane crash probe amid public fury
Iran's judiciary says arrests have been made in connection with the crash of a Ukrainian plane last week that Tehran blamed on a "human error" by its armed forces.
At a weekly press briefing in Tehran Jan. 14, the spokesman for Iran's judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Esmaeili, announced "several" arrests were made in connection with the crash of a Ukrainian passenger jet last Wednesday. All 176 people on board were killed.
It took Iranian authorities three days to admit that a missile battery operator "mistakenly" shot down the aircraft. At the time, the country's armed forces were in a state of high alert in anticipation of a US attack in response to a barrage of Iranian missiles on two American bases in neighboring Iraq.
The judiciary spokesman did not release details on the exact number or identity of those in custody, but said the arrests were part of a wider probe into the tragedy, launched by the country's Judiciary Organization of the Armed Forces upon a directive from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Appearing in public for the first time following the crash, Iran's President Hassan Rouhani called for a "special court," where those culpable would be put on trial. "It is not that the one individual who pressed the button is to be blamed only. There are others involved and I want this to be explained to the nation with honesty," Rouhani said. The comment appeared to reference higher ranking officers at the hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), whose air defense base west of the capital Tehran shot down the plane.
