Pressure Mounting on Iran to Hand Over Black Box of Downed Ukrainian Plane

Ukraine’s foreign minister once again called for the swift handover of the black box from the Ukrainian plane that crashed near Tehran. This request came as Iran’s minister of roads and urban development visited Kyiv.

Ukraine’s foreign minister criticized the contradictory statements by Islamic Republic officials regarding the handover of the black box from Ukraine International Airlines flight 752, which crashed shortly after takeoff from Tehran airport, urging Tehran not to delay this matter.

According to Reuters, Vadym Prystaiko emphasized on Monday, December 30 (January 20), that Ukraine is increasing pressure on Iran to hand over the black box of the downed plane, and that Tehran would demonstrate its desire for an impartial investigation by doing so.

Boeing 737 flight 752 from Tehran to Kyiv was hit by two air defense missiles fired by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the early morning of December 18, and all 176 passengers on board lost their lives when the plane was destroyed.

Despite evidence and reports attributing the plane crash to the impact of air defense missiles, Islamic Republic officials vehemently denied these reports until December 21 and provided false information, despite having precise knowledge of the cause of the incident.

Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ aerospace force, acknowledged responsibility for the catastrophic error on December 21 during a televised interview, stating that the operator of the Revolutionary Guard’s air defense system had “mistakenly identified the Ukrainian passenger plane as a cruise missile” and fired at it.

Following Iran’s acceptance of responsibility for the incident through Hajizadeh’s statement, Ukraine demanded a formal apology from Iran and a commitment to pay compensation to the families of the victims of the downed plane.

Abbas Mousavi, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced Monday morning that the minister of roads and urban development, Mohammad Eslami, has traveled to Kyiv at the head of a delegation to deliver a written message from Hassan Rouhani to his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Is the Roads Minister Carrying an Apology Message?

Mousavi did not clarify the content of this message, but Ukraine’s foreign minister stated that Mohammad Eslami traveled to Kyiv to apologize and expressed hope that he would be able to pursue the matter of handing over the black box of flight 752 in discussions with him and his team.

Canada’s prime minister requested on Friday, December 27, that Islamic Republic officials send the black box and the data recorded in the cockpit of the downed Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 to France as quickly as possible. He emphasized that Iran does not have the technical knowledge and equipment to do this.

Justin Trudeau stressed at a press conference that many questions remain unanswered about how this incident occurred. He added that Canada is not satisfied with the answers provided by Islamic Republic officials so far.

Hasan Rezaeifar, director general of the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, admitted on December 21: “We used all our capabilities to assess the black box, but since the accident aircraft is a modern and advanced Boeing, Iran does not have the technology to download the data from this aircraft’s black box and it may be damaged if we begin reconstructing the black box.”

He stated that after consultations with countries including Ukraine, Britain, Canada, and Sweden, it was agreed that France, given its advanced equipment and experience in this work, is the appropriate country to retrieve and decode the data from the downed aircraft.

Contradictory Statements by Senior Civil Aviation Official

This senior aviation official announced on December 28 that the black box from flight 752 would be transferred to Kyiv or France. He reversed his position one day later and told Iran’s news agency IRNA that the two black boxes from the Ukrainian aircraft were still in Iran, and referring to efforts to read them, said “we have not yet decided to send it to another country.”

Simultaneously with these contradictory statements, François-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s foreign minister, announced that in a letter to his counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif, he requested the “earliest possible” transfer of the downed aircraft’s black box to Ukraine or France.

Foreign ministers from five countries—Canada, Ukraine, Britain, Afghanistan, and Sweden—whose citizens died in the crash of flight 752 from Tehran to Kyiv—paid tribute to the victims in London on Thursday and called on the Islamic Republic to pave the way for a complete and transparent international investigation into the incident.

Canada’s foreign minister, referring to the clarification of the cause of the downed Ukrainian passenger aircraft from Iran, called for providing international experts access to Islamic Republic officials involved in the incident to clarify the matter.

The Islamic Republic has already faced considerable domestic and international problems and protests for targeting a civilian aircraft and for concealment and contradictions regarding it; revealing the details of this incident could have more serious consequences for Iran.

Source: DW