The black box transcript of a Ukrainian plane accidentally shot down by Iran on January 8 confirms the fact of illegal interference with the plane, according to Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister.
Yevhenii Yenin’s remarks came on Friday, a day after an international team examining the plane’s flight recorders had completed a preliminary analysis of the data in France.
“Grateful to all the partners who helped bring this moment closer. # PS752 black boxes were successfully read and deciphered. The transcript confirmed the fact of illegal interference with the plane,” Yenin wrote on Twitter.
He also said that Kiev expected an Iranian delegation to visit Ukraine next week to talk.
Iranian forces say they shot down Ukraine International Airlines’ Boeing 737 plane after mistaking it for a missile at a time of high tension with the United States. The 176 people on board were killed.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said this month that it was too early to blame human error for the plane’s downing and that many questions remained unanswered.
International probe
A team of investigators from the same countries as the victims of the plane crash met this week at France’s Office of Research and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) in Paris to begin extracting the data.
“Downloading and preliminary data analysis was an important milestone in what should be a thorough and transparent security investigation,” said Katy Fox, chair of the Transportation Safety Board (TSB) from Canada on Thursday.
“The work in Paris is finished, but the investigation is far from over. There are still many key questions that need to be answered,” he said in a statement.
“We urge Iran to release objective information from registrars as soon as possible,” Fox said, adding that Iran, which is leading the investigation, has not authorized TSB to disclose details.
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