Pressure grows on Iran to hand over black boxes from downed airliner

Five countries whose citizens were among 176 people killed when Iran shot down a Ukrainian airliner last month have urged it to release the plane's flight recorders "immediately", as Kiev and Tehran argue over who should analyse the so-called black boxes.

The Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737 crashed in flames on January 8th shortly after take-off from Tehran en route to Kiev, killing everyone on board.

For three days, Iranian officials denied responsibility and claimed the plane suffered a technical fault, before finally admitting their military had fired missiles at the jet mistakenly during a time of high tension with the United States.

Iran’s leaders then pledged to co-operate fully with international investigators, but amid contradictory statements from officials the black boxes are still being tightly guarded by Tehran.

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Canada said on Tuesday that its officials had discussed the latest developments with representatives of Ukraine, Britain, Sweden and Afghanistan, all of which, along with Iran, lost citizens in the crash.

‘Transparent account’

“All countries are concerned with Iran’s failure to release the black boxes . . . Iran must release the black boxes immediately as a demonstration of continued willingness to have a full and transparent account of this event,” Canada’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“Furthermore, all participants are committed to finding common ground on legal options for negotiations with Iran regarding its responsibility in this act in order to bring justice, including equal compensation to the families of the victims of flight PS752.”

In Prague on Tuesday, Ukrainian foreign minister Vadym Prystaiko said: "We not only demand that Iran admits its guilt but immediately hands over the black boxes to us, and also resolves the question of compensation to victims of the dead and, ultimately, even for the plane that they destroyed."

Iran is furious that Ukrainian television aired a leaked recording of an exchange between the control tower at Tehran airport and an incoming Iranian airliner at the time of the disaster.

“Is this an active area? There are lights like a missile,” the pilot says in Farsi.

‘An explosion’

“Nothing has been reported to us,” the tower replies.

Shortly afterwards, the pilot says: “Dear engineer, it was an explosion. We saw a very big light there.”

The air-traffic controller then tries in vain to contact the Ukrainian plane.

Lead Iranian investigator Hassan Rezaifar said the recording had been given to Kiev as part of information-sharing efforts.

“This action by the Ukrainians led to us not sharing any more evidence with them,” Iranian media quoted him as saying.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the recording showed Iran had known the truth of the disaster "from the start".

He also expressed fears Tehran would not hand over the black boxes even though "technically they are not able to decode them properly". France has repeatedly offered to perform the analysis with Ukraine.