AA / Montréal / Hatem Kattou
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed his dissatisfaction on Tuesday after the announcement of the organization of a friendly football match between his country’s national team and his Iranian counterpart, calling on the organizers of this meeting to explain.
During a trip on Tuesday to the island of Newfoundland (east), Trudeau felt that the holding of the friendly match, next June 5, in Vancouver, between Iran and Canada “is not not a very good idea”.
In response to a journalist’s question about the match, the Prime Minister said that “it was a choice of Soccer Canada” (Football Federation), before adding: “‘I think it was not not a very good idea to invite the Iranian soccer team here to Canada. But this is something that the organizers will have to explain”.
Reacting to the announcement of the match, Canadian families who lost loved ones in the explosion of the Ukrainian plane (flight PS-752), in Tehran, shortly after takeoff, in January 2020, qualified this event of “slap in the face”.
Some 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents of the 176 passengers who were on board the aircraft, the target of an Iranian surface-to-air missile and which was to reach kyiv, perished in the plane crash.
Trudeau made a point of recalling that “the question of flight 752 shot down by an Iranian missile which caused the death of dozens of Canadians is still not resolved”.
Canadian authorities have found that Iran has “violated international law” through its actions and omissions, just as a court in the province of Ontario has called the hit of the aircraft by a missile “a ‘act of international terrorism’.
Qualified for the first time at a World Cup since 1986, Canada will face Iran on June 5 in Vancouver.
At the end of the draw, Canada inherited a raised group F composed, in addition to the selection of the country of maple, Belgium, Croatia and Morocco.
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