The black boxes from the Ukrainian Boeing that Iran accidentally shot down in early January will be analyzed inside Iran, Mohammad Eslami, the Islamic Republic's minister of roads and urban development, said on Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 22nd January, 2020) The black boxes from the Ukrainian Boeing that Iran accidentally shot down in early January will be analyzed inside Iran, Mohammad Eslami, the Islamic Republic's minister of roads and urban development, said on Wednesday.
Eslami spoke to Iranian reporters upon returning from Kiev, where he had met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a special representative of Tehran to negotiate the fate of the black boxes and remnants of the down airplane.
"Decoding the black boxes from the downed Ukrainian plane will take place in Iran," Eslami said, as quoted by Iranian state tv IRIB.
The minister added that Iran had begun preparing the necessary software and equipment.
"If Iranians specialists will not be able to decode the black boxes inside Iran then other measures will be taken at that time," Eslami added.
The black box issue has become increasingly contentious as Ukraine maintains it should handle the decoding process, while Iran has sent mixed signals about its readiness to send the flight recordings abroad.
Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed near Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport minutes after takeoff on January 8. All 176 people on board were killed, among them citizens of Ukraine, Iran, Canada, Afghanistan, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Three days later, the Iranian military admitted to unintentionally shooting down the jetliner, having confused it with a hostile cruise missile.
Zelenskyy has called on Iran to bring those behind the downing of the plane to justice and to pay compensation to the relatives of the victims.
