UIA plane crash: Iran must hand over black boxes by June 26 or explain its actions to ICAO

Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Yevhenii Yenin said this in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.

He reminded that, as stipulated by the Chicago Convention, the state in whose territory the crash took place must ensure the immediate decoding of "black boxes." If it does not have the appropriate equipment, it must transfer them to a third party.

"Realizing that Iran does not have such equipment, as well as Ukraine, we, as the Foreign Ministry, negotiated with the French side and obtained its prior consent. The representatives of the United States, being the aircraft’s designer, also confirmed their readiness to come to France. Three months ago, the Iranian side stated: give us two weeks, that will be enough to hand over the boxes. The session of the ICAO council will last until June 26, and the representative of Iran will have to explain why this has not happened yet," Yenin said.

He added that coronavirus pandemic could not be an excuse for everything. In this context, the diplomat cited as an example the plane crash that had occurred in Pakistan three and a half weeks ago and the French technical bureau had already decoded the black boxes of the crashed plane.

"But we do not dump into the decoding of ‘black boxes’, there are other forms of obtaining evidence," the diplomat noted.

 "There are satellite data that confirm the fact that Boeing was shot down by two missiles - because two missiles were found, they have a unique structure, two separate alloys is clearly seen. There must be audio and video data from the missile systems from which the missiles were launched. "If there are no boxes, there will be no tragedy, this does not mean that there are no other ways to establish the truth," the deputy minister assured.

At the same time, Yenin pointed to the "very encouraging" rhetoric of the Iranian side. "I would like it to turn into real steps," he concluded.

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.

On January 11, Iran admitted that its military had accidentally shot down the Ukrainian passenger jet. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) accepted full responsibility for the downing of the Ukrainian airliner.

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 has 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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