Pressure on Iran to hand over Ukrainian plane's "black box" increases

The Ukrainian Foreign Minister once again called for the immediate return of the black box of the Ukrainian plane that was shot down near Tehran. This request was made at the same time as the Islamic Republic's Minister of Roads and Transport was in Kyiv.

The Ukrainian Foreign Minister, criticizing the contradictory statements of the Islamic Republic's officials regarding the handover of the black box of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, which was shot down shortly after taking off from Tehran Airport, once again called on Tehran not to delay in this matter.

According to Reuters, Vadym Prystaiko stressed on Monday, January 20, that Ukraine is increasing pressure on Iran to hand over the black box of the downed plane, and that by doing so, Tehran will show that it wants an impartial investigation into the incident.

Boeing 737 Flight 752 Tehran-Kyiv was targeted by two IRGC air defense missiles on the morning of January 8, and all 176 passengers and crew were killed when the plane disintegrated.

Despite evidence and reports that the plane was hit by air defense missiles, until January 11, and despite having precise knowledge of the cause of the accident, Islamic Republic officials vehemently denied these reports and provided false information.

Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards' Aerospace Force, took responsibility for this catastrophic error in a television interview on January 11, saying that the IRGC's air defense system had "mistakenly identified the Ukrainian passenger plane as a cruise missile" and fired at it.

After Hajizadeh accepted responsibility for the incident, Ukraine demanded an official apology from Iran and a commitment to pay compensation to the survivors of the victims of the downed plane.

Abbas Mousavi, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced on Monday morning that Minister of Roads and Urban Development, Mohammad Eslami, has traveled to Kiev at the head of a delegation to deliver a written message from Hassan Rouhani to his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Minister of Transport carrying a message of apology?

Mousavi did not elaborate on the content of the message, but the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, stating that Mohammad Eslami traveled to Kiev to apologize, expressed hope that he would be able to follow up on the issue of handing over the black box of Flight 752 in a conversation with him and his entourage.

On Friday, January 17, the Canadian Prime Minister called on Iranian officials to immediately send the black box and cockpit data recorders of the downed Ukrainian Airlines Flight 752 to France. He emphasized that Iran does not have the technical knowledge and equipment necessary for this task.

Justin Trudeau stressed to reporters that there are still many unanswered questions about how the incident occurred, adding that Canada is not satisfied with the answers that Iranian officials have provided so far.

Hassan Rezaeifar, the director general of the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization's Accident Investigation Bureau, admitted on January 11: "We used all our resources to evaluate the black box, but since the crashed plane is a modern and advanced Boeing aircraft, Iran does not have the technology to download the black box data from this plane, and it may be damaged when the black box reconstruction begins."

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

Contradictions from a senior official of the Civil Aviation Organization

The senior official of the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization announced on January 18 that the black boxes of Flight 752 would be transferred to Kiev or France. He changed his position a day later, telling the IRNA news agency that the two black boxes from the Ukrainian plane were still in Iran, and adding, referring to efforts to read them, “We have not yet decided to send them to the second country.”

At the same time as these contradictions, Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced that he had written a letter to his Iranian counterpart, Javad Zarif, requesting that the black box of the downed plane be sent to Ukraine or France "as soon as possible."

The foreign ministers of five countries, Canada, Ukraine, Britain, Afghanistan, and Sweden, whose citizens lost their lives in the downing of Tehran-Kiev Flight 752, commemorated the victims in London on Thursday and called on the Islamic Republic to pave the way for a full and transparent international investigation into the incident.

At the ceremony, the Canadian Foreign Minister, referring to the clarification of the cause of the downing of the Ukrainian passenger plane, called on Iran to allow international experts access to the Islamic Republic's officials involved in the incident to clarify the issue.

The Islamic Republic has already faced numerous domestic and international problems and protests for targeting a civilian plane and its cover-up and contradictions about it; the revelation of the details of this incident could have even more serious consequences for Iran.

Source: DW