Iran still failing in showing facts about Ukrainian plane downing

Islam Mohamed

Iran refuses to cooperate in investigations on the downing of the Ukrainian passenger plane in January this year. It works hard to evade responsibility for the tragedy and prevent the relatives of the victims of the plane to get their rights.

The Iranian army shot down the plane on January 8. Nobody knows why it did this.

The Iranians insist that they shot the plane down by mistake when they attacked U.S. military bases in Iraq in response to the killing of the commander of the Iranian Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, on January 3.

Nevertheless, some people claim that Iran shot down the plane because it carried a wanted man who was on the way to leak some classified Iranian documents to foreign agencies.

Iran refuses to hand over the black box of the plane which was travelling to Toronto, Canada.

Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, said his country would not hand over the black box of the plane.

He said in an interview with the American network, NBC, that international law gives his country the right to keep trying to analyze data on the box.

He also held the U.S. responsible for Iran’s failure to collect information about the plane tragedy.

The U.S., he said, refuses to provide Iran with the necessary technical support to do this.

Zarif said Iran needs modern equipment and accused the U.S. of failure in cooperating with Iran in this regard.

Iranian authorities also prevent the families of the victims from travelling abroad to attend the funerals of their relatives.

The same families were threatened with punishment if they do not keep silent.

Five states, namely Canada, the UK, Ukraine, Sweden and Afghanistan, formed an action group to coordinate efforts on the plane down investigation.