CBC News has learned of a private conversation about the downing of Flight PS752 from an audio recording. The recording is being reviewed by the Canadian government and the security agencies. The person, identified as Iran’s foreign affairs minister by sources, says there are a “thousand possibilities” that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran shot down Flight 752 of Ukraine International Airlines in the skies above Tehran.
All 176 people aboard were killed in the attack, including 138 people with ties to Canada. Due to concerns about the safety of people, the details of the conversation, and the identities of the others involved, are not published publicly. Ralph Goodale, the special advisor to the prime minister on the PS752 file, says that the RCMP, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Communications Security Establishment are evaluating the authenticity of the recording.
Originally, Iran denied any involvement in the destruction of the plane. Three days after the crash, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran admitted that his army had “unintentionally” shot down the aircraft. He blamed human error, saying that in the aftermath of an American drone strike that killed a high-ranking Iranian military general in Iraq, the military mistook the jetliner for a hostile target.
In the Farsi-language recording, the person identified as Zarif is heard suggesting that the downing was accidental, but later says that it was deliberately shot down by “infiltrators”. “There would have been two three people who did this. And it’s not at all unlikely. They could have been infiltrators. There are a thousand possibilities,” says the individual.
The news was an exclusive extraction from CBC.ca
