Press TV - Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has stressed that Iran will never forget the US’s downing of the Iran Air Flight 655.

Zarif made the remark on his official twitter account on Monday, which marks the 29th anniversary of the downing of an Iranian Airbus A300B2 passenger plane by a US Navy guided-missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf waters in 1988.

“July 3, 1988, US ship shot down #IR655, killing 290 civilians. Ship capt. was awarded medal for murdering innocents. Iranians won’t forget,” he tweeted.

Despite being equipped with highly sophisticated radar systems, the USS Vincennes claimed that it had mistaken Iran Air Flight 655 for a warplane.



A year later, the captain of the USS Vincennes, William C. Rogers, was cleared of any wrongdoing in the incident, and was even awarded America’s Legion of Merit medal by then President George Bush for his “outstanding service.”



[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="555"] The file picture shows a survivor holding up a picture of victims of USS Vincennes’ downing of an Iranian passenger plane on July 3, 1988.[/caption]

Earlier in the day, the Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement to commemorate the victims and once again censure the US Navy’s “horrific crime.”

“A look at the precedence of the US inhumane behavior, which is manifested in massacring innocent people across the world, including the aggrieved people of Iran, indicates that such an attitude has been institutionalized in various US governments in pursuit of their own goals,” said the statement.