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- Kiev slams Iran for its 'cynical attempt' to conceal the truth behind downed Ukrainian jet
Kiev slams Iran for its 'cynical attempt' to conceal the truth behind downed Ukrainian jet
'This is not a report, it is a collection of manipulations' aimed at whitewashing Iran of all responsibility
Kiev on Wednesday excoriated Iran for its "cynical attempt" to conceal the truth after the Islamic Republic released its final report on the downing of a Ukrainian jet in January 2020.
"The document does not present all the circumstances, does not reveal the root causes of the tragedy or the chain of actions that led to it," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in a video posted to Facebook.
"This is not a report, it is a collection of manipulations, the goal of which is not to establish the truth, but to whitewash the Islamic Republic of Iran," he said.
On January 8, 2020, Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 was hit by two missiles after taking off from Tehran, killing all 176 passengers on board.
Following a more than year-long investigation, the Civil Aviation Organization of Iran (CAOI) released its final report on the incident, ultimately placing blame on an air defense unit for the tragedy.
Iran had initially denied any involvement in the incident, with the CAOI at the time suggesting there had been a technical failure.
According to the BBC, Iranian officials also allowed the crash site to be looted and then bulldozed.
Eventually, Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Aerospace Force took responsibility for the attack, explaining that an air defense unit had mistaken the Boeing 737-800 for a US missile.
The CAOI report released on Wednesday concluded that the air defense unit ultimately "failed to adjust the system direction out of human error, causing the operator to observe the target flying west from [Tehran Imam Khomeini Airport] as a target approaching Tehran from the south-west at a relatively low altitude."
"The target specifications were announced to the command center, but the message was never relayed. Without receiving a go-ahead or response from the command center, [the operator] came to identify the target as a hostile one and fired a missile at the aircraft against the procedure planned," it added.
Along with Ukrainian nationals, citizens from four other countries were aboard the jet including the majority from Canada, the UK, Afghanistan, and Sweden.
In December, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne said that Ottawa did not believe Iran's explanation and rejected the missile strike as a result of human error.