Iran will not hand over the black box of the Ukrainian plane to another country

Despite Iran's inability to open the black boxes of the downed Ukrainian plane, it is still unwilling to hand them over to another country. Officials from the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization have said the black boxes will remain in Iran for now.

Hassan Rezaeifar, Director General of the Accident Investigation Bureau of the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization, told IRNA on Sunday, January 19, that the two black boxes of the Ukrainian plane are in Iran and that they currently have no plans to send them.

He stressed that attempts will be made to read the black box in Iran first. The director general of the Civil Aviation Authority's Accident Investigation Bureau has said that Ukraine and France are next options, "but we have not yet decided to send it to the second country."

This is despite Rezaeifar previously telling IRNA that the black box of the crashed plane would be sent to France for downloading. The reason is that Iran does not have the technology to download information from modern and advanced Boeing aircraft, and it is possible that the black box could be damaged during the reconstruction process.

Tasnim News Agency also quoted Rezaeifar as saying: "Repeated meetings have been held with the Ukrainian team of experts, and the black boxes are not being read in Iran. In response to the Ukrainians' request, the black boxes are being transferred to this country, and using the expertise of France, Canada, and the United States, we are trying to read the plane's FDR in Kiev."

Tehran-Kiev Flight 752 was shot down by two surface-to-air missiles fired by the Revolutionary Guard Corps on Wednesday morning, six minutes after takeoff, killing all on board. The cover-up of the disaster and the three-day cover-up by the Islamic Republic authorities led to protests and anti-government slogans. Officials expressed regret for human error, but Iran has yet to officially apologize for the disaster.

Now, with Iran refusing to hand over the black boxes to Ukraine or France, suspicions are being raised that the Islamic Republic is likely trying to hide the reason for firing missiles at the Ukrainian plane, and even suspicions have grown stronger that the firing of missiles at the plane was not a "human error" as the leaders of the Islamic Republic say, but a deliberate act.

On Friday, January 17, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mentioned efforts to persuade Tehran to send the black boxes to France.

Source: DW