Iran Will Not Hand Over Ukrainian Plane’s Black Box to Another Country
Despite Iran’s inability to open the black box of the downed Ukrainian plane, it remains unwilling to hand it over to another country. Officials from Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization have stated that the black boxes will remain in Iran for now.
Hasan Rezaifar, director general of the accident investigation office of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, told IRNA news agency on Sunday, December 29 (January 19), that two black boxes of the Ukrainian plane are in Iran and they currently have no plan to send them.
He emphasized that efforts will first be made to read the black box in Iran. The director general of the accident investigation office stated that Ukraine and France are subsequent options, “but we have not yet made a decision to send it to a second country.”
This is while Rezaifar had previously told IRNA news agency that the black box of the crashed plane would be sent to France for data download. The reason is that Iran does not have the technology to download data from modern and advanced Boeing aircraft, and there is a possibility of damaging the black box during reconstruction.
Tasnim news agency also wrote, quoting Rezaifar: “Meetings have been held repeatedly with the Ukrainian expert team and the black boxes cannot be read in Iran and, in response to the Ukrainians’ request, the black boxes will be transferred to that country and using the expertise of France, Canada, and the United States, we will try to re-read the FDR of the aircraft in the city of Kyiv.”
Flight 752 from Tehran to Kyiv was shot down on the morning of Wednesday, December 18, six minutes after takeoff, by two ground-to-air missiles fired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps air defense, killing all crew and passengers. The cover-up of this tragedy and the three-day concealment by Islamic Republic authorities were accompanied by protests and anti-government slogans. Responsible officials expressed regret over human error in this regard, but Iran has not yet formally apologized for the tragedy.
Now, with Iran’s refusal to hand over the black boxes to Ukraine or France, suspicion arises that the Islamic Republic may be attempting to conceal the reason for firing missiles at the Ukrainian plane, and this suspicion has even strengthened that the missile firing was not “human error” as the Islamic Republic’s leaders claim, but was an intentional act.
Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, referred on Friday, December 27, to efforts to encourage Tehran to send the black boxes to France.
Source: DW
