New protests as Iran makes first arrests over downed airliner

TEHRAN: Iran announced Tuesday its first arrests over the accidental shooting down of a Ukrainian passenger jet, as protesters vented their anger over the catastrophic blunder for a fourth consecutive day.

The tragedy has seen hundreds of angry protesters, most of them students, take to the streets, apparently chanting slogans against the Islamic republic. AFP correspondents said around 200 mainly masked students gathered at Tehran University on Tuesday and were locked in a tense standoff with youths from the Basij militia loyal to the establishment. “Death to Britain,” women clad in black chadours chanted as Basij members burned a cardboard cutout of the British ambassador to Tehran, Rob Macaire, after his brief arrest for allegedly attending a demonstration Saturday. Kept apart by security forces, the groups eventually parted ways.

Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili said the first arrests had been made over the air disaster, without naming them or specifying how many. “Extensive investigations have been carried out and some people have been arrested,” he said. Esmaili also said around 30 people had been arrested in the protests over the air disaster.

The announcement came shortly after President Hassan Rouhani said about the air disaster that “anyone who should be punished must be punished”. “The judiciary must form a special court with a high-ranking judge and dozens of experts... The whole world will be watching,” he said. “It cannot be that only the person who pressed the button is at fault.

Iran grants Canada investigators access to downed plane: Canadian investigators flying to Tehran on Monday will access the wreckage and black boxes from a Ukranian jetliner downed by a missile strike last week, officials said. “We don’t fully know what the scope of our investigation will be,” Transportation Safety Board (TSB) chair Kathy Fox told a press conference. However, she added, “there have been early signs that Iran is allowing the TSB to play a more active role than is normally permitted. Two Canadian investigators were to land in Tehran within hours, followed by two more in the coming days or weeks. They have been invited by Iran, which is leading the crash probe, to participate in the downloading and analysis of the aircraft’s cockpit voice and data recorders. They will also be allowed to visit the crash site and the wreckage of the plane that is being reassembled in a nearby hanger. “We do know what has happened. What we don’t know is why it happened,” Fox commented before listing off questions surrounding the crash that still need to be answered. These include whether the missile strike was intentional or not, and why the air space was open amid heightened tensions in the region.

Trudeau cites US ratcheting up tensions with Iran in plane’s downing: Victims of an Iran-downed jetliner would still be alive if not for a recent escalation of tensions partly triggered by the United States, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday. “I think if there were no tensions, if there was no escalation recently in the region, those Canadians would be right now home with their families,” Trudeau said in an interview with Global television, according to a transcript shared with other media.