The Judiciary Organization of the Armed Forces has been tasked with probing the data on the aircraft’s black boxes with the help of experts from the General Staff of the Armed Forces and the Civil Aviation Organization of Iran as well as electronic warfare professionals, the spokesman said.
Esmaili further noted that efforts would be made to shed light on all dimensions of the incident and to ensure that justice is served.
An Iranian air defense unit mistakenly shot down Flight 752 of the Ukrainian International Airlines on Wednesday morning shortly after take-off from Tehran en route to Kiev.
The operator had mistaken the Boeing 737-800 with a cruise missile at a time when the air defense systems were at the highest level of alert following Iran’s missile strike on a US air base in Iraq in retaliation for Washington’s assassination of prominent commander Lieutenant General
Iran says a Ukrainian plane which crashed outside Tehran this week had flown close to a sensitive military site and been brought down due to human error “at a time of crisis caused by US adventurism.”
The official said that many individuals had already been interrogated as part of the probe, and that documents and evidence were being collected.
‘Judiciary regards UK envoy as persona non grata’
Elsewhere in his remarks, Esmaili referred to the brief arrest of British Ambassador to Tehran Robert Macaire during an unauthorized protest near Tehran’s Amir Kabir University on Saturday.
“The fact that the UK ambassador to the Islamic Republic attends an illegal gathering, takes photos and videos of the event and plays a provocative role is totally unacceptable,” he said.
“In his first encounter with [Iranian] security forces, [Macaire] spoke in English and refused to introduce himself, but when he later realized that he risked being arrested, he began to speak in Persian and introduced himself as Britain’s envoy,” the official added.
He said the British ambassador’s action clearly amounted to “mischief and lying,” stressing that “under international law, such elements are regarded as persona non grata, whether they are diplomats or not. The public is demanding his expulsion.”
The official said the responsibility to make a decision in this regard resides with the Foreign Ministry, but that from the Judiciary’s perspective, “Macaire is a persona non grata.”
A former top national security adviser to President Trump told Republicans in the House impeachment inquiry Thursday morning to stop advancing a “fictional narrative” that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections rather than Russia.
WASHINGTON — A former top national security adviser to President Trump told Republicans in the House impeachment inquiry Thursday morning to stop advancing a “fictional narrative” that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections rather than Russia///CRIMSON TAZVINZWA/
“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country — and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves,” said Fiona Hill, who until July was the deputy assistant to the president and senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council.
“The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan congressional reports. It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified,” Hill continued.
Hill, who testified alongside State Department counselor David Holmes, told the House Intelligence Committee that the Russians have succeeded in what they set out to do in 2016, and are going to do it again in the 2020 election.
“Our nation is being torn apart. Truth is questioned. Our highly professional and expert career foreign service is being undermined,” Hill said. “President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a super-PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each other, degrade our institutions and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy.”
It is not common. At least in today’s world politics and power. Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet—who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storms and peace unspeakable and perfect.’ What Carl Sandburg, the prairie poet, said of Abraham Lincoln, the prairie lawyer and politician might just as well apply to the propety, real estate mason; magnet and tycoon born in New York City, from borough of Queens, Donald Trump who has been called in many ways, and justifiably so, the ‘worst’, mysoginistic, self aggrandising, self consuming businessman cum politician – president of his time. Politics is a paradoxical discipline, both absolute and flexible, fixed and evolving. Conservative as precedent, and liberal as compassion, it demands respect for institutions and the governed. Yet it relies upon imperfect individuals to give them life.
The inquiry was triggered by a whistleblower’s complaint about a July 25 phone call between Trump and Zelenskiy. That call is central to the impeachment investigation that Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. Democratic-led House, announced last week.
Trump, a Republican, asked Zelenskiy to investigate one of his main rivals in the 2020 election, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, and his son Hunter, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, according to a memo released by the White House.
