Iran said on Friday that a provincial Canadian court has no jurisdiction to rule on a claim for damages over the crash of a Ukrainian passenger plane downed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards last year, Reuters reported.

The Superior Court of Justice of the Canadian province of Ontario ruled on Thursday that Iran owes damages to families who sued over the crash, which killed 176 people, 138 of them with ties to Canada.

“Everyone knows that the Canadian court has no jurisdiction over this air crash” since it occurred outside Canada, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters on Friday.

The ruling “is not based on eyewitness evidence”, he added.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard fired two missiles at Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 shortly after it took off from Tehran on January 8 last year, killing all 176 aboard. The agency's final report into the crash said “the aircraft was misidentified as a hostile target by an air defense unit.”

Iran initially denied having anything to do with the crash, but US officials said early on that the plane had been shot down by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran later admitted that it had made a mistake and shot the Ukrainian plane after it flew too close to a sensitive military site and failed to respond to signals.

Foreign states are not typically within the jurisdiction of Canadian courts, but a 2012 Canadian law limited that immunity for countries listed as “foreign state supporters of terrorism,” including Iran.

The judge did not rule on damages, which will be dealt with at a future hearing. When it was first filed, the lawsuit sought at least $1.2 billion in compensation.

Source: Arutz 7