People mourn plane crash victims in Iran. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
“There cannot be another massacre of peaceful protesters, nor an internet shutdown. The world is watching,” tweeted the American president in response to anti-regime demonstrations protesting a downed passenger plane.
By Associated Press
On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump called on the Iranian regime to allow human rights groups to monitor protests in the Islamic Republic in the aftermath of the regime acknowledging that it shot down a Ukrainian airliner earlier this week, killing all 176 passengers aboard.
Via Twitter, Trump expressed his support of the “brave, long-suffering people” of Iran on Saturday after hundreds gathered at universities in Tehran to protest the government’s belated acknowledgement of shooting down the passenger plane.
“There cannot be another massacre of peaceful protesters, nor an internet shutdown. The world is watching,” Trump added.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also took to Twitter to express his support for the Iranian people and lashed out against Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the “regime’s lies, corruption, ineptitude.”
The protesters demanded officials involved in the missile attack be removed from their positions and tried. Police broke up the demonstrations.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is offering over $8,000 in financial compensation to the families of its citizens who died in the jetliner crash in Iran earlier this week.
All 176 people on board the plane were killed, including 11 Ukrainians. Iranian officials have admitted responsibility for shooting down the plane.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address Saturday that his government will also push Iran to provide separate compensation to the victims’ families.
He had just spoken by phone to Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, and said Iran promised to prosecute those responsible for the shootdown.
The crash happened early Wednesday, hours after Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on U.S. bases in Iraq. That attack was in retaliation for the U.S. killing of a top Iranian general.
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