Iran Agrees To Hand Over Black Boxes From Downed Ukrainian Plane To Kyiv

The Iranian Civil Aviation Organization has agreed to send the flight recorders from a downed Ukrainian passenger plane to Kyiv for analysis, an Iranian diplomat said.

Tehran has also invited other interested countries to participate in reading the data from the black boxes, Farhard Parvaresh, who heads Iran’s delegation at the UN’s Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization, told Reuters on March 11.

The Iranian military said it accidentally shot down the Ukrainian jet on January 8, killing all 176 people on board.

The victims included 82 Iranian citizens and 63 Canadians, many of them of Iranian origin.

The shooting occurred with Iran’s air-defense forces on high alert following an Iranian ballistic-missile attack a few hours earlier on U.S. forces in Iraq.

The strikes came days after Iran’s most prominent military commander, Qasem Soleimani, was killed in a U.S. drone strike outside Baghdad.

Iranian officials have for two months refused to hand over the recording devices for deciphering.

Based on reporting by Reuters