Iranian security forces have threatened families of victims of the Ukrainian plane downed by Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) on January 8 last year not to hold anniversary ceremonies, an informed source has told Iran International TV. The families have been contacted repeatedly, including by people calling themselves judicial representatives of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and telling them to leave anniversary ceremonies to the IRGC and Basij.

The source said the families had been threatened with “sedative injections,” and that “agents” had asked anyone wanting graveside anniversary ceremonies, common in Iran, if they were sure their loved ones were buried in those graves. Some families allowed burial without seeing the remains due to extensive injuries and burns. “Had you seen the body with your own eyes to be so sure?” one family was allegedly asked.

Iran failed to explain the plane’s destruction for three days and subsequently attributed it to human error, with the airliner hit by two surface-to-air defense missiles shortly after it took off from the Imam Khomeini International Airport. On Wednesday [January 6], in a statement marking the anniversary of the tragedy, which killed all 176 onboard, the IRGC said the incident had resulted from the “risky behavior” of the United States. Ukrainian Airlines flight 752 was shot down hours after Iran fired missiles at a US bases in Iraq, leaving tens of American servicemen with traumatic brain injuries, in retaliation for a US drone strike in Baghdad that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and nine others.

Some of the families of those who died on flight 752 have contested the claim that human error was responsible. “The operator of the [air defense] system served as a professional instructor [of the system] in Iran and Syria,” tweeted Javad Soleimani, who lost his wife in the crash,  in May. “How can he have made a mistake? You must ask your Leader [Ali Khamenei] why the airspace [of Iran] was not shut down and why other flights at the same time as the Ukrainian flight were stopped.”

In October another source told Iran International TV that the Guards were interrogating members of victims’ families and using threats of murder and torture to stop them from speaking to Persian-language media abroad.

Some family members outside Iran have reported being threatened by Iranian agents. The Canada-based spokesman for the families of Iranian victims of flight PS752, Hamed Esmaeilion, wrote in a Facebook post in October of “hate messages, suspicious cars, strange calls and death threats,” the details of which he said he had passed on to Canadian police. Esmaeilion linked this to the killing in October of Iranian dissident Mehdi Amin, although Canadian police subsequently charged a woman with second-degree murder and said the crime was unconnected to Amin’s political activism.