An Iranian court on Sunday sentenced 10 military personnel to prison terms over the shooting down of a Ukrainian plane near Tehran in January 2020, according to the Judicial Authority News Agency.

The most prominent defendant, the head of the air defense unit, was sentenced to ten years in prison for acting contrary to directives issued by the command.

Kamal Nine other soldiers were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one year to three years, according to Mizan Online Agency.

The agency reported that the official of the "Tor M-1" air defense unit "fired two missiles" at the plane "against orders from the command center and without obtaining permission and in violation of directives."

The names of any of the convicts were not mentioned, but they include four members of the air defense unit, the commander of an air defense base, and an officer at the control center. Convicts can appeal the verdicts, according to the same source.

For its part, the Victims' Families Association said on Twitter that it "does not recognize the courts of the Islamic regime," and added, "We demand an impartial international court to look into this crime. We aspire for fair trials in a free Iran."

Three days after the tragedy, the Iranian armed forces admitted that they had "accidentally" shot down the plane bound for Kiev.

Tensions between Iran and the United States were running high at the time of the incident.

At the time, Iran's air defenses were put on high alert in anticipation of an American attack, after Tehran fired missiles at a military base in Iraq that was used by American forces.

The missile launches came in response to the assassination of the commander of the Quds Force in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qassem Soleimani, by an American drone near Baghdad Airport.

All 176 passengers on board were killed in the downing of the plane in 2020, most of them Iranians and Canadians, and many of them hold the nationalities of the two countries.

Also, 11 Ukrainian citizens died in the accident.

In November 2021, the Iranian judiciary announced the start of the trial of the ten military personnel in Tehran against the background of the downing of the plane.

At the time, he indicated that "103 people filed a complaint with the Public Prosecution," demanding "an impartial investigation ... to identify those responsible and prosecute them."

In January of last year, Iran announced that it had started paying compensation to the families of those killed.

The deputy head of Iran's Civil Aviation Authority, Arash Khodaei, said that "the amount of $150,000" has been transferred to some families of the victims, while "the process" of compensation for other families has begun.

The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted him as saying that the payment "does not violate their right to take legal action".
In 2020, Iran offered to pay "150,000 dollars or its equivalent in euros" to each of the victims' families.

At the time, Ukrainian and Canadian officials sharply criticized the ad, saying that compensation should not be settled through unilateral declarations.

A Canadian court ruled to pay more than $80 million in compensation to the families of six of the victims, in a decision revealed in January 2022.

That same month, an Iranian couple sued three senior Iranian officials over the deaths of their children in the incident, an Iranian newspaper reported at the time.

A group of countries, led by Canada, called in December for arbitration to settle claims against Iran, a first step that could lead to a case being taken to the International Court of Justice, a move families of victims have long called for.