KIEV (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th April, 2020) Kiev insists that Tehran hand over the black boxes of the Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft that was downed in Iran in January, the country's Foreign Ministry said Monday.
According to the statement, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba discussed this issue with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who had assured Kiev that Tehran was seeking to investigate the tragedy as soon as possible, find out all its circumstances, and identify the perpetrators of the incident and bring them to justice.
"Kuleba noted that Ukraine was committed to further dialogue to clarify all the circumstances of the tragedy, bring the perpetrators to justice and pay relevant compensations to the families and friends of the victims of the tragedy. The foreign minister separately emphasized that he insisted on the delivery of flight recorders to Ukraine in accordance with the Chicago Convention, followed by a decision on the place of their decoding and investigation involving countries whose citizens died as a result of the tragedy," the ministry said.
On January 8, a Kiev-bound aircraft crashed shortly after departing from Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport. All 176 passengers and crew members died. The Iranian military admitted to unintentionally shooting down the plane, having confused it with a hostile cruise missile amid fears of retaliation by the United States for Iran's attacks on bases hosting US troops in Iraq. Tehran launched the missile attacks after the US assassination of senior Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
The Iranian leadership has apologized to the crash victims' countries, including Canada, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on Tehran to bring those behind the downing of the plane to justice and to pay compensation to the relatives of the victims.
