Canada Asks Iran to Send Crashed Plane’s Black Boxes to Ukraine or France
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Canada has asked Iran to hand over to France or Ukraine black boxes from the Ukrainian airliner that crashed this month near the capital, Tehran.
Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois-Philippe Champagne said he had spoken with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on the subject.
"I repeated Canada's position that the black boxes be sent as quickly as possible either to Ukraine or France so it can be done somewhere the expertise exists and it can be done in a transparent manner," Champagne said Sunday on the sidelines of a government seminar in Winnipeg, Reuters reported.
Champagne said that he judges Iran "not by their words, but by their actions."
On Saturday, the director in charge of investigations at the Civil Aviation Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hassan Rezaeifar, said Tehran will send to Kiev the black boxes of the passenger plane.
"We will try to read (the information on) the FDR (flight data recorder) in Kiev with the use of the expertise of the countries of France, Canada and America," he said.
"If this effort is not successful, the black box will be transferred to France," the official added.
The Kiev-bound UIA Boeing 737, crashed shortly after taking off from Tehran on January 8, killing all 176 people on board, mostly Iranian and Canadian citizens.
Iran said the plane was hit by an anti-aircraft missile due to human error.
