Official: Ukraine Officials’ Claims Unacceptable
TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Allegations about the accidental downing of a passenger plane in Iran are unconstructive, a high-ranking security official told Press TV on Monday, adding Ukrainian officials are trying to politicize the case.
Keyvan Khosravi, the spokesman for Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), said the plane’s black boxes were one of the main sources of information used to compile the final report of an investigation into the January 2020 mishap.
An informed Iranian official said Sunday Ukraine was trying to attribute the incident to problems with the Russian Tor-M1 missile system.
"Unfortunately, Ukrainian officials are trying to ascribe false allegations to Iranian officials in order to politicize this case, and their recent allegations in this regard are by no means constructive and acceptable,” Khosravi said on Monday.
The official mentioned Iran’s all-out cooperation with Ukraine to clarify various aspects of the incident.
"Since the inception of this bitter incident, we have accepted all demands put forth by Ukrainian government, which at times went beyond what was necessary under usual circumstances so that there would remain no dark corner in the efforts made to shed light on the truth in this incident,” he said.
"Sending the plane’s black boxes to France to decode their contents is the most important reason that proves Iran’s transparency and honesty in its effort to bring to light all details about this incident,” Khosravi added.
The official described attempts to take political advantage "of a bitter incident, which is related to sentiments of scores of bereft families” as "regrettable and inhuman”.
"Various independent expert groups have delved into all the existing hypotheses about targeting of the Ukrainian plane,” he said.
All those groups, the Iranian official said, "have asserted categorically and based on technical and expert evidence that this incident has been unintentional and a result of human error.”
"So far, no foreign authority has offered any other technical reason to dismiss or even undermine Iran’s expert report,” he said.
Ukrainian authorities, Khosravi said, "are merely trying to mount political pressure on Iran by creating a media buzz and provoking sentiments of the families of this incident’s martyrs”.
Khosravi said court hearings are
currently underway with the participation of culprits in this bitter incident and that due punishment will soon been meted out through the competent court.
On January 8, 2020, the Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, en route to Kiev and carrying mostly Iranians, crashed minutes after takeoff near the Iranian capital, killing all the 176 on board.
The plane was shot down by Iran’s air defenses, which mistook the aircraft for a military target amid tensions between Tehran and Washington following the U.S. assassination of top anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq days earlier.
On Saturday, An informed official close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said Ukraine had been trying to politicize the January 2020 accidental downing of its passenger plane in an attempt to mount pressure on Russia amid tensions between the two neighbors.
The official, whose name was not released, told Nour News on Sunday that Ukrainian officials had offered that Iran announce a technical glitch in its Russian-made Tor-M1 anti-aircraft defense system as the cause of the tragedy.
On Friday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh dismissed a claim by Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, that the crash was "intentional and conscious attack.”
Keyvan Khosravi, the spokesman for Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), said the plane’s black boxes were one of the main sources of information used to compile the final report of an investigation into the January 2020 mishap.
An informed Iranian official said Sunday Ukraine was trying to attribute the incident to problems with the Russian Tor-M1 missile system.
"Unfortunately, Ukrainian officials are trying to ascribe false allegations to Iranian officials in order to politicize this case, and their recent allegations in this regard are by no means constructive and acceptable,” Khosravi said on Monday.
The official mentioned Iran’s all-out cooperation with Ukraine to clarify various aspects of the incident.
"Since the inception of this bitter incident, we have accepted all demands put forth by Ukrainian government, which at times went beyond what was necessary under usual circumstances so that there would remain no dark corner in the efforts made to shed light on the truth in this incident,” he said.
"Sending the plane’s black boxes to France to decode their contents is the most important reason that proves Iran’s transparency and honesty in its effort to bring to light all details about this incident,” Khosravi added.
The official described attempts to take political advantage "of a bitter incident, which is related to sentiments of scores of bereft families” as "regrettable and inhuman”.
"Various independent expert groups have delved into all the existing hypotheses about targeting of the Ukrainian plane,” he said.
All those groups, the Iranian official said, "have asserted categorically and based on technical and expert evidence that this incident has been unintentional and a result of human error.”
"So far, no foreign authority has offered any other technical reason to dismiss or even undermine Iran’s expert report,” he said.
Ukrainian authorities, Khosravi said, "are merely trying to mount political pressure on Iran by creating a media buzz and provoking sentiments of the families of this incident’s martyrs”.
Khosravi said court hearings are
currently underway with the participation of culprits in this bitter incident and that due punishment will soon been meted out through the competent court.
On January 8, 2020, the Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752, en route to Kiev and carrying mostly Iranians, crashed minutes after takeoff near the Iranian capital, killing all the 176 on board.
The plane was shot down by Iran’s air defenses, which mistook the aircraft for a military target amid tensions between Tehran and Washington following the U.S. assassination of top anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq days earlier.
On Saturday, An informed official close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said Ukraine had been trying to politicize the January 2020 accidental downing of its passenger plane in an attempt to mount pressure on Russia amid tensions between the two neighbors.
The official, whose name was not released, told Nour News on Sunday that Ukrainian officials had offered that Iran announce a technical glitch in its Russian-made Tor-M1 anti-aircraft defense system as the cause of the tragedy.
On Friday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh dismissed a claim by Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, that the crash was "intentional and conscious attack.”