Ukraine 'even closer' to decision on legal action over Flight PS752, ambassador says

Ukraine's ambassador to Canada says Iran's decision to indict 10 Iranian officials for their role in shooting down Flight PS752 without publicly naming the officials only pushes his country closer to deciding whether to take international legal action.

"I think this brings us even closer to very important strategic decisions on how we have to deal with this situation, including on a big decision on whether we are going to take this case to the international court," Andriy Shevchenko told CBC News Network's Power & Politics.

"Obviously, our intention is to make sure that we co-ordinate well with Canada and with other involved countries," he told host Vassy Kapelos.

Iran announced earlier Tuesday that it had indicted theofficials but Tehran military prosecutor Gholamabbas Torki withheld their names when he made the announcement.

Last year, Iran's military shot down Ukrainian International Airlines Flight PS752, killing 176 people, many of whomhad ties to Canada, including 55 Canadian citizens and 30 permanent residents.

The indictments come after Iran faced widespread criticism last month for releasing a final report into the incident that blamed human error, but named no one responsible.

Shevchenko said his government is not satisfied with the technical or criminal investigations.

He said his officials did not have "good co-operation" with Iranian officials and Iran's failure to name the officials it is blaming for the tragedy does not improve upon the investigations' transparency.

"We have no clarity on who those people are and also we do not know what exactly they are accused of," Shevchenko said.

"We do not know much how thorough the investigation has been so I would say that Iran has still a lot of work to do to prove that this investigation is transparent and this does not change what we feel about this; we feel that there should be more transparency and we're not going to compromise on transparency on clarity and on justice," he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday that he also remained concerned about Iran's "lack of transparency and the lack of a full and total investigation."

"We will continue to work with the international community, work to reform international aviation standards and mostly work to make sure that the families that I have had the opportunity to meet with and sit down with who continue to be heart broken and will for the rest of their liveson the losses of these loved onesget closure, get compensation and mostly get justice from Iran."

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