‘It’s unimaginable’: brothers mourn lost loved ones a year after Iranian plane crash
Posted January 6, 2021 12:11 pm.
Last Updated January 6, 2021 5:19 pm.
MONTREAL – A picture is all Armin and Arash Morattab have left of their brother Arvin and his wife Aida Farzaneh a year after Ukraine flight 752 was shot down in Iran.
The plane was shot down on Jan. 8, 2020, killing all 176 people on board. Nearly 140 of those killed had ties to Canada.
“We had a lot of good memories together and we miss this every day,” said Armin, Arvin’s twin.
Armin says when he lost his brother, he lost a part of himself.
RELATED: Families of downed Ukrainian Flight 752 victims struggle with loss a year later
“We were born together… It’s hard to think that all those beautiful moments that we created together—we [had] all this life alongside each other—[we] cannot make such beautiful moments anymore,” he said.
“It’s sad. It’s unimaginable.”
Arvin and Aida were both Ph.D. graduates from Montreal’s Ecole de technologie superieur.
They had hope and dreams to buy a house and start a family, and they’ve left a huge void in their community, among their family and friends.
“We were living very close to each other. Once, twice a week we could visit each other and have a party, have a discussion. All that is gone. They had very bright people with a lot of plans for their future,” said Armin, who added the pair was energetic and kind.
Arash remembers hearing Arvin and Aida tell him they’d be home soon days before the crash.
RELATED: Iran allocates payment to families of Ukraine crash victims
“I was looking at their videos. He was sending videos to us, from my hometown with my parents. He was showing us everything was okay, saying, ‘it’s so beautiful here’… They’ll see me soon.”
But they would never make it home.
“[That’s] the part that brings rage—the way they’d been killed, the way it happened,” said Armin.
The surviving two Morratab brothers want justice.
An association of families of victims of the plane crash is looking to bring this to international courts, to obtain more evidence and have independent investigators take the case out of Iran’s hands.
Meantime, WestJet says it plans to resume flying its fleet of 737 MAX aircraft later this month, pending approval by Transport Canada.
