Canada strongly criticizes the regime's "limited and handpicked" report on the Ukrainian plane's black box: Iran should say why the missiles were fired?
Canada says it wants the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to be held accountable for the downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane, as Tehran's initial "limited" report failed to explain why it shot down the plane.
The Canadian government said Sunday it had received a copy of an Iranian report of cockpit voice recordings that showed the pilots of the flight were alive before the second missile was fired. The second missile hit the plane 25 seconds after the first missile exploded.
"The initial report provides only limited and selective information about this tragic event," Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne and Transport Minister Marc Carnot said in a statement.
The statement said: “This report only describes what happened after the first missile was fired and does not say anything about the second missile. This only confirms information we already knew. We expect the Islamic Republic of Iran to answer important questions [and say] why the missiles were fired in the first place and why were Iranian skies open?”
The statement concluded: "These are questions that Canada, Canadians, and most importantly, the families of the innocent victims need to know the answers to."
After months of delays and wasted time, Iran finally sent the downed plane's black box to France for analysis in mid-July, almost six months after the disaster.
In a statement, the Association of Families of Ukrainian Passenger Plane Victims called Iran's report "a ridiculous display of cover-up and repeated lies."
"This shameful display was devoid of any answers to all the evidence and questions that indicate the strong possibility that this missile attack was deliberate," the association said in its statement.
The Association of Families of Ukrainian Passenger Plane Victims demanded that others (other countries involved in the case) "publish the contents of the black box in its entirety" so that the facts can be clarified.
On the morning of Wednesday, January 8, a Ukrainian Airlines Boeing 737 passenger plane with 176 passengers en route to Canada was shot down by the Revolutionary Guards' air defenses after taking off from Tehran Airport.
For several days, Iranian officials blamed the crash on a technical fault. But the United States immediately announced that the plane had been shot down. After several days, the Revolutionary Guards finally admitted that they had mistakenly targeted the plane. This delay in revealing the truth and the regime's deception sparked public outrage and protests.
However, in recent months, those responsible for the downing of the plane have not yet been tried; but several civil activists who protested the IRGC's actions have been sentenced to prison by the Iranian judiciary.
Source: Voice of America
