Washington, DC, December 17, 2019 --(PR.com)-- The law firm of Herischi & Associates, LLC announces the filing of a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. against the National Iranian Tanker Corporation; former Labor Minister, Iranian Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Welfare and current Iranian politician, Ali Rabiei; and the former chairman of the Committee for Foreign Policy and National Security of the Islamic Consultative Assembly of Iran (Majilis), Alaeddin Boroujerdi; on behalf of the families of ten crewmembers of the Sanchi oil tanker.
This complaint comes as a result of the Sanchi Oil Tanker Disaster on January 6, 2018. Allegedly, the Sanchi oil tanker, a Panamanian-flagged, Iranian-owned tanker, collided with a Chinese cargo ship, the CF Crystal, in the East China Sea. The complaint alleges: This crash resulted in the sinking of the Sanchi after several explosions; hours after the ship sank, President Rouhani of Iran wrote a letter stating that the entire crew had perished in the early moments of the incident and stating the crewmen were martyred for resistance economy; however, no evidence of the entire crew’s deaths has been produced to date. The defendants allege that the crew did not have a chance of survival because they were either caught in the ship’s explosion and died due to the fire and high temperatures, or perished before the explosion due to exposure from poisonous gases from oil leaking from the ship’s cargo.
In the complaint, the families contest all of the allegations made by the defendants and allege that the crew of the Sanchi were seized after the collision and have been held in detention for nearly two years in an undisclosed location. The plaintiffs allege that the accused parties deliberately lied to the Iranian people and their families about the deaths of the crew, and have pressured the families to accept their version of events following the collision to put an end to questions about the incident.
The complaint alleges that the defendants have denied the families access to information about the incident and their relatives. Allegedly, in the official crash report approved by Iran, China, Panama, and Hong Kong, officials state that the majority of the crew are considered “missing” and that only three bodies were discovered in the aftermath of the wreck. The complaint alleges several grounds for believing that the crew survived the wreck; however, the key piece of evidence in support of the crew’s survival is that multiple phone calls were made from crewmembers’ cellphones to their relatives in the months following the ship’s destruction.
With this lawsuit, Herischi & Associates hopes to provide answers for the family members and the people of Iran.
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