TEHRAN – Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Monday saying the killing of innocents throughout the world shows that successive U.S. governments have institutionalized “anti-human behaviors”.

The statement was issued on the 29th anniversary of downing of an Iranian passenger plane by a U.S. Navy guided-missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf waters in 1988. All the 290 people on board were killed.

The U.S. claimed that the crew incorrectly identified the Iranian Airbus A300 as a warplane while the airliner was making IFF squawks in Mode III (not Mode II used by Iranian military planes), a signal that identified it as a civilian craft.

“The Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Republic of Iran condemns unfair and anti-human action of the U.S. Navy in downing the Iranian passenger plane on 3 July 1988 and commemorates memory of martyrs of this horrible crime,” the statement read.

It added, “The Iranian nation considers perpetrators of this catastrophe illogical who commit crime under the name of supporting the human rights and defending the nations while they should answer for their anti-human behaviors.”

The Iranian people will never forget this disaster and will not forgive its perpetrators, the statement said.

NA/PA