Justin Trudeau: We are Pressuring Iran to Send Black Boxes to France

Canada’s Prime Minister, expressing concern over the fate of the black boxes from the downed Ukrainian aircraft, said he is pressuring Iran so much that it will be forced to send this information to France. Iran has admitted it does not have the equipment to read the black boxes.

Canada’s Prime Minister again emphasized that Iran does not have the necessary technical equipment to download and read the data from the black boxes of the downed Ukrainian aircraft.

According to Reuters, Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, today, February 1st (January 21), spoke of Iran’s inability to read flight data and stressed that the recorded conversation data between pilots and the control tower should be sent to France as soon as possible. Ukrainian officials are also requesting that these conversations be handed over to them.

During the crash of the Ukrainian passenger aircraft with two missiles from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, 176 passengers lost their lives. Of these, 57 passengers were Canadian citizens.

Canada insists that the black boxes from this aircraft should be handed over to France because this country is one of the few countries with the necessary specialized capabilities and equipment to read stored information and conversations between the pilot and the control tower.

Trudeau said in an interview with the media that the black box data from this aircraft should be downloaded, read, and analyzed as soon as possible by “skilled and expert specialists.”

Referring to the fact that Iran does not have the necessary technology and equipment for this task and the black boxes should be sent to France, he emphasized: “The international community and we continue to pressure Iran to do exactly that.”

A Claim That Was Refuted

Iran had previously claimed it was capable of independently decoding the black boxes. However, this claim was refuted by Iran’s new request for assistance from France and the United States.

Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization today sent a list of technical equipment needed to download, review, and analyze data from the Ukrainian aircraft’s black boxes to France’s accident investigation agency (BEA) and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, which according to Reuters, has not yet received a positive response.

Prior to this request, Hassan Rezaifar, director general of the accident investigation office of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, had admitted: “We used all our capabilities to assess the black box, but since the crashed aircraft is one of the modern and advanced Boeing aircraft, Iran does not have the technology to download the black box data of this aircraft and may damage it when starting to reconstruct the black box.”

Parliamentary Representative Criticizes Contradictions of Iranian Officials

Iran’s delay and reluctance to hand over the black boxes has also drawn criticism from some parliamentary representatives. Bahram Parsaei, representative of Shiraz in the Iranian parliament, in three tweets about the crash of the Ukrainian aircraft, criticized the “hasty and unprofessional statement of the head of the civil aviation organization and his appointed official in the accident investigation committee” and wrote that why “they, contrary to ICAO regulations, announced a technical defect as the cause of the accident before reading the black box, and caused further complications and questioning of the accident investigation committee.”

The Shiraz representative asked in his tweet: “What benefit does contradiction in handing over or not handing over the black box to the manufacturer have other than creating ambiguity?”

Earlier, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board stated in a statement that Iran has no clear plan to read the black box data.

Canada had sent a six-member team of its investigators to Tehran to investigate the crash of the Ukrainian aircraft, and two of these investigators left Iran three days ago.

The Challenge of Dual Citizens

Canada’s Prime Minister, who emphasizes “accountability” of Iranian authorities regarding this incident and considers the implementation of “justice” as the wish of the Canadian people and the families of the victims, has recently faced a challenge with “dual citizens.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry officials recently accused Canada’s Prime Minister of “being overreaching” and seeking to implement justice and pay compensation to passengers who hold Iranian-Canadian citizenship.

Trudeau today considered “Tehran’s refusal to recognize dual citizenship” of this group of passengers as a problem and challenge.

The Boeing 737 aircraft belonging to Ukraine International Airlines, which was shot down on December 8 (January 8) with two missiles from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is of American manufacture.

Iran has long been unable to purchase modern aircraft and products with U.S. technology due to American sanctions, which has caused Iran’s commercial aircraft fleet to consist of aircraft from several decades ago with no possibility of renovation and reconstruction.

Source: DW