Iran Isn’t Planning to Release Data From Downed Plane: IRNA
Iran Isn’t Planning to Release Data From Downed Plane: IRNA
(Bloomberg) --
Iran has “no plans for now” to send the black box from the plane that crashed after taking off from Tehran earlier this month to Ukraine or any other country, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
“We will try to decode the black box of the accident-stricken Ukrainian plane in Iran,” Hassan Rezaeifar, the head of the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization’s accident investigation office, told the agency. “Our next options are Ukraine and France, but we still haven’t made a decision about transferring it to a second country.”
Iran is under international pressure to provide more information on the the circumstances that led to the shooting down of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752 earlier this month. It occurred days after the Jan. 3 killing by the U.S. of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani.
The comments published by IRNA on Sunday are in contrast to remarks on semi-official Tasnim news agency on Saturday when Rezaeifar said that the black boxes wouldn’t be decoded in Iran and would be transferred to Ukraine in line with a request from officials in Kiev.
The Iranian Civil Aviation Organization couldn’t immediately comment on Sunday when reached by phone.
To contact the reporter on this story: Golnar Motevalli in Dubai at gmotevalli@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Lin Noueihed at lnoueihed@bloomberg.net, Rachel Graham, Brian Wingfield
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