Iran to transfer black boxes of crashed plane to Ukraine

Iran will transfer the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder of a crashed Boeing aircraft to Ukraine for further investigation, according to Iranian media.

“The black boxes of Flight 752 will not be decoded in Iran and will be transferred to Ukraine instead as per the country’s request,” semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, citing Hassan Rezaeifar, head of the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization’s accident-investigation office.

Iran is under intense international pressure to provide full accountability over the circumstances that caused the crash of the Ukrainian International Airlines plane on January 8. The country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps later said it had mistaken the aircraft for a cruise missile.

The three-year-old Boeing Co. 737-800 abruptly stopped transmitting its position and plunged to the ground about two minutes after takeoff from Tehran, killing all 176 aboard. The crash occurred hours after the Islamic Republic started launching rockets against Iraqi bases where US forces are stationed, in retaliation for the killing of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani.

Iranian officials at first fiercely denied that Iran was to blame for the crash, provoking outrage and protests in Iran once they accepted culpability.