"Passengers on Ukrainian plane had gotten out of their seats before the missile hit"

The head of Ukraine's forensic medicine department said that the bodies of passengers on the Tehran-Kiev flight were found without seats, meaning that the passengers had unbuckled their seatbelts and stood up. He believes this is a sign of panic in the cabin before the missile hit.

The head of Ukraine's forensic medicine and a member of the country's Forensic Medicine Research Center said that based on the evidence obtained, the passengers of flight PS752 Tehran-Kiev had gotten up from their seats before the missile hit the plane.

"When the plane takes off, all passengers must fasten their seat belts," Alexander Ruvin told a Ukrainian newspaper. "This rule applies from 2,000 meters until the plane reaches 8,000 meters, and as a result, all passengers must fasten their seat belts until they reach 8,000 meters."

The plane was shot down before reaching an altitude of eight thousand meters.

The head of the Ukrainian forensic medicine department continued: "This is while the bodies of the passengers on the plane were all without seats on the ground. To be more precise, if the passengers had fastened their seat belts, they should have been thrown out with their seats. Exactly what happened with Malaysian flight MH17 [the flight that was shot down over Ukraine]. But what we saw in Iran shows that there was panic and convulsions in the cabin before the missile hit the plane."

According to Alexander Ruvin, the panic and anxiety in the cabin caused passengers to unbuckle their seatbelts and get out of their seats despite the red light indicating that they were still fastened. He says there is evidence that there was a fire inside the cabin and that black smoke was coming out of the vents.

According to the Ukrainian official, immediately after the plane crashed, and while people were still allowed to enter the crash site, Iranian forces collected all the pieces of the plane from the crash site.

He adds that all the mobile phones and laptops of the 176 passengers on the plane, which were in the possession of the Ukrainian team, have been taken back by Iran.

Ukrainian officials had previously said that Iran "began to cover up" the crash site too early in the initial investigation and closed it to the foreign team.

"We couldn't find the bottom of the plane, we only found four seats, while the flight had 167 passengers plus crew," says the head of Ukraine's forensic medicine.

Ukraine threatens to sue the International Court of Justice

Tensions between Ukraine and Iran escalated after the interview was published in a Ukrainian newspaper. Ukraine threatened to take Iran to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, Netherlands, if Iran did not cooperate in the investigation into the cause of the plane crash.

"If our negotiations do not yield results, we will be forced to file a complaint with the International Court of Justice, and this will not only involve Ukraine, but also Canada, Britain, Sweden and Afghanistan," the Ukrainian Foreign Minister said on May 18.

These are the countries whose citizens were on the Tehran-Kyiv flight.

The Ukrainian foreign minister expressed hope that Iran would fulfill its international obligations and hand over the plane's black box. He also stressed that Iran had not yet closed the case, "although the country where the accident occurred should immediately re-read the black box or hand it over to a third country."

On January 8, Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, en route from Tehran to Kiev, was shot down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) six minutes after takeoff from Imam Khomeini International Airport. All 176 passengers and crew on board were killed. For three days after the incident, Iranian officials said the crash was caused by a technical malfunction.

After the publication of an interview with the head of the Ukrainian forensic medicine organization, revealing that there may have been a fire on the plane before the missile was fired, some families of the survivors as well as social media users have spoken of the possibility of another missile being fired.

Source: DW