Open letter to the president of ICAO

Dear Mr. Sciacchitano, President of ICAO

I am writing to you as the spokesperson of the Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims in regard to the overt hesitations and reservations of the ICAO in response to the non-compliances of Iran. More importantly, I speak to you as a grieving husband and a devastated father mourning the loss of my wife and nine-year-old daughter to the inhumane missile attacks by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to a civilian aircraft. This is my second letter to you, and I hope that it

will not remain unanswered as our first dated March 28, 2020.

176 passengers and an unborn child were murdered on January 8, 2020.

To this day with 167 days passed, our pleas for justice remain unanswered by the very organizations that are instituted to govern such matters. I am certain that you will agree with me that this matter deserves urgent and top attention by relevant international authorities. Such attention is even more crucial to the outcome given that the Iranian officials have systematically engaged in a cover-up from the very outset. Moreover, the Iranian government has proactively undermined any hope for justice by its actions, from the multiple missile attacks against a civilian aircraft shortly after take-off, to bulldozing the crash site within hours, destruction of evidence, confiscation of critical evidence, intimidation of families, and other sophisticated attempts to engage in a psychological warfare against grieving families. As opposed to the case of MH17 where the ICAO took swift action in condemnation of the crime and fully ventured into the ensuing investigations,

Flight PS752 has been effectively ignored by your organization.

What is your substantive reaction to this crime? What is the mandate of your organization in the face of such inhumanity? What will be the future consequences of your inaction towards the Iranian government? How will your stance against this crime ensure the safety of civilian air travel anywhere in the world where governments like that of the Islamic Republic of Iran are in power?

These are questions that haunt every waking hour of so many of us who grieve with no prospect for closure, justice and restitution. Every passenger of every civilian flight anywhere in the world must look to your reaction to this crime in fear and disappointment.

We the families of the murdered passengers of flight PS752 are reaching out to you not for empathy, pity or condolences, but for justice and acting on your responsibility to maintain the

integrity of an important organization such as the ICAO. We ask you to contemplate your reactions to this crime since the morning of January 8 and how they have helped in maintaining security for civilian air travel, your organization’s primary reason to exist. We ask you to consider that with every passing day, our hopes to witness an impartial and thorough investigation into this crime will diminish even further. Our hopes for finding closure and justice for our loved ones fades with every minute that the Iranian government continues to deceive the world.

International protocols, conventions and regulations have been mocked by the Iranian government. The flight recorders were retrieved months before COVID-19 restrictions struck the

world. You have failed to obligate the Iranian government to cooperate on any level from surrendering the black boxes, to allowing international authorities to investigate the crime or

disclosing information as to how and by whom these crimes were committed. The world has witnessed nothing other than mockery, misinformation, intimidation and cover-up attempts by the Iranian government. More alarmingly, the world has witnessed the failure of the ICAO to govern the matter that is foundational to the organization’s purpose.

It is with this heavy heart that I reach out to you on behalf of the families of the victims of this crime. It is with utmost disappointment by all of us that I ask for a meeting with you, be it in-person or online, to discuss our plight and your position in this regard. We trust that your organization can play a substantial role in helping to bring justice and put an end to a pattern of inhumanity.

Sincerely,

Hamed Esmaeilion

Spokesperson

The Association of Families of Flight PS752 Victims

CC: Dr. Fang Liu, ICAO Secretary General