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Flight data recorders of downed Ukrainian jet to remain in Iran - MP

A member of the Iranian parliament’s development commission noted the Ministry of Road and Urban Development will be in charge of decoding the black boxes

TASS, January 26. Flight data recorders of a Ukrainian passenger plane Boeing 737 that crashed near Tehran earlier this month will remain in Tehran and will be decoded on Iranian soil, Farajollah Rajabi, a member of the Iranian parliament’s development commission, told Tasnim news agency.

"Our policy is that the Ukrainian plane’s black box would remain in Iran and be read here," MP said, according to the report.

The Ministry of Road and Urban Development will be in charge of decoding the black boxes, Rajabi noted.

On January 22, Iranian Minister of Roads and Urban Development Mohammad Eslami announced that the flight data recorders would be decoded in Iran. Earlier, Head of the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization's Incident Investigation Unit, Hasan Rezaiefar said Iranian authorities would hand over to Ukraine data from the black boxes.

A Boeing 737 airliner of the Ukrainian International Airlines crashed several minutes after its takeoff from Tehran Airport on January 8. A total of 176 people, including citizens of Afghanistan, Germany, Iran, Canada, Ukraine, Great Britain and Sweden were killed in the crash.

The Iranian General Staff issued a statement on January 11, admitting that the Ukrainian plane had been shot down by mistake. Commander of the Aerospace Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (the elite wing of the Iranian military) General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that the national air defense systems had mistaken the passenger plane for a cruise missile.

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