Oleksii Danilov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said his country’s intelligence services were aware of 17 cases where Canadian families were negotiating with the Iranian government over “how and where they will bury the bodies” of their relatives. Ukraine has had a team on the ground in Tehran since Jan. 9, one day after the Ukrainian International Airlines plane was downed by a missile attack that Iran says was a “disastrous mistake.”
Two other sources in Ukraine – whom The Globe is not identifying because they were not authorized to speak on the record – said the issue of dual nationals was one of the thorniest in negotiations between Iran and the six other countries that lost citizens on Flight 752, a list that besides Canada and Ukraine includes Sweden, Afghanistan, Germany and the United Kingdom.