Iran ready to send black boxes from downed UIA plane to Ukraine if it provides necessary conditions

Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami said this on Wednesday, June 17, according to Tasnim News Agency.

“The necessary coordination in this matter provides for the reading of black boxes in Ukraine in the presence of ICAO experts,” the minister said.

According to Eslami, if the conditions aren’t provided then the reading will take place in France.

He noted that Ukraine initially lacked the technical capability to read the black boxes.

The reading of the boxes will take place in coordination with the United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization.

Earlier, Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Yevhenii Yenin said that the Iranian side must either hand over the "black boxes" of the downed UIA plane for decoding on June 26, or explain why this has not been done yet.

The Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) plane (flight PS752) heading from Tehran to Kyiv crashed shortly after it took off from the Imam Khomeini International Airport at about 06:00 Tehran time (04:30 Kyiv time) on January 8. There were 176 people on board – nine crew members (all Ukrainians) and 167 passengers (citizens of Ukraine, Iran, Canada, Sweden, Afghanistan, Germany, and the UK). They all died.

It emerged later that the UIA plane had been shot down by two missiles of the Tor-M1 air defense system, which Iran received from Russia.

The International Coordination and Response Group for the Victims of Flight PS752 Crash insisted on the transfer of flight recorders to France which has the necessary technical capabilities for decoding them.

Iran's official in the International Civil Aviation Organization agreed in March to hand over the black box flight recorders to France or Ukraine for analysis, but this has not been done so far.

Six people charged with the downing of flight PS752 were detained in Iran.

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