'We will never forget. We will never forgive': Family and friends reflect on lives of victims killed in Flight 752 tragedy

The University of Windsor hosted an hour-long ceremony Monday to commemorate the deaths of five people with ties to the institution who died in the Flight 752 tragedy. 

On Jan. 8, 2020, 176 people were killed when their aircraft, now known as Ukrainian Airlines Flight PS 752 was shot out of the sky about 100 km from take-off in Tehran.

Fifty-five Canadians were on board, among them, five people with connections to the University of Windsor.

They are biology research assistant Samira Bashiri; engineering doctoral students Hamidreza Setareh Kokab, Pedram Jadidi, and Zahra Naghibi; and Naghibi’s spouse Mohammad Abbaspour Ghadi.

Bashiri’s mother, Afsaneh Asadi spoke at the ceremony inside the CAW Student Centre on campus.

“We will never forget. We will never forgive,” Asadi said. “Once we lost our children, our partners, our parents and our loved ones we are not living. We are only alive.”

Asadi reflected on how sad she felt that morning when she said goodbye to her daughter at the airport.

“Calming myself by having thoughts that you are having a great life. Safety and peace ahead of you in your new home,” said Asadi. “I was saying to myself I would see her soon just like we promised each other.”

Asadi described her grief like being a bear trapped in a cage.

“My wings clipped and my feet are tied. I cannot leave my cage and I cannot fly. I open my mouth to sing, nothing comes out,” said Asadi.

Family friend John Smithies also spoke at length about the depth of their loss.

His family rented an apartment to Samira Bashiri and her husband Hamidreza Setareh Kokab since December 2018.

“We had new life in the house,” said Smithies. “We became like family. We ate together. We laughed together.”

He said they were happy to be Canada but also homesick for Iran.

Smithies said just weeks before her death, Bashiri passed the test to become a Canadian citizen.

“She was so happy,” said Smithies.

He told the audience he asked Kokab to cancel their planned trip to Iran for Christmas because it was “turbulent” at the time.

“He (Kokab) said ‘John, we have to go, we have to honour our parents. We can’t forget where we came from. We measured the risk and we’re going.’”

Smithies noted the plan by Canada and several other countries to make Iran accountable for its actions in shooting the aircraft down that day.

“Finally,” said Smithies. “However this is just the beginning. My prayer is the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) will be dismantled completely and the Iranian people become free.”

Dr. Lisa Porter, professor in biomedical sciences also spoke of her grief in losing both Bashiri and Kokab.

“They were affectionately known around campus as Sami and Hami,” said Porter.

She said the couple came to Windsor for Kokab’s work as an engineer, although Bashiri was a trained veterinarian in her own right.

“She quickly found a way to leverage her expertise to improve the models that we use to study cancer and novel drug development,” said Porter.

Porter said “it’s easy to focus on the pain and the hate” when people with promise and potential are “unfairly” taken unexpectedly.

“Hate is justified. But our world is so full of hate, where does it stop? Samira was the furthest thing from it,” said Porter. “The more we elevate peace, freedom, equality and education for all, the more we support the success of our Iranian community, we prevent hate from winning.”

Rupp Carriveau, faculty advisor to Zahra Naghibi spoke about what a bright light she was to his lab in civil and environmental engineering.

“What she meant to us, I can’t tell you, and I look at those videos and I just think of what was taken from us, and that’s where things go dark for me,” said Carriveau.

He noted Naghibi was working on engineering in greenhouses which was outside his area of expertise.

“Somehow she managed to do her work and elevate our lab, without exposing how little her supervisors were able to help her. That was never lost on me,” said Carriveau.

Carriveau says her early work continues to be referenced and cited in their proposal applications to this day.

“Through her remarkable understanding and reconciliation of how energy can ultimately deliver good nutritious food to people at lower cost, when you have clever engineering solutions,” Carriveau said.

“Your absence taught us how short and cruel life could be,” Mahsa Rahimi, friend of Kokab, told the audience. “Your smile is indelibly imprinted in our minds and your words (are) clearly heard through photos and memories we made together.”

Mehrdad Saif, a professor in computer and electrical engineering spoke on behalf of Dr. Shaohong Cheng who could not attend Monday’s event about Pedram Jadidi.

She wrote, “I will never forget the exciting moment when he and another student successfully reproduced a wind-induced vibration phenomenon in the wind tunnel lab.”

Dr. Cheng said she had “no doubt” Jadidi would one day be a an excellent researcher, saying he was “a very bright, very talented and self-motivated student.”

Saif was also asked to speak on behalf of the Iranian community at the University of Windsor.

“Even death now will have no power to quiet their name from beating widely in our hearts,” said Saif. “Their memories are forever etched in our minds, may they rest in peace.”

Saif spoke in Persian at the end of his address, which drew the greatest applause from the audience.

Since their deaths, the university has created a scholarship in memory of the victims of Flight752 and some of the recipients were in the audience for Monday’s event.