The Iranian Aviation Authority announced that the black boxes of the Ukrainian passenger plane that the Revolutionary Guards recently shot down are being examined in error and that they have not yet decided to send them to Ukraine and France.
On Sunday, the Iranian News Agency quoted - Hassan Hassan Rezaei, head of the Air Accidents Investigation Committee of the Iranian Aviation Authority - as saying that his country is not currently planning to send the two boxes that contain flight data abroad.
The head of the investigation committee added that if his country's authorities are unable to examine the boxes, then he will decide whether to send them to Ukraine or France.
The same official said on Saturday that the boxes would be sent to Kiev for American, Canadian and French experts to analyze their data.
After the plane was shot down on the eighth of this month shortly after taking off from Khomeini International Airport, killing all 176 passengers, Iranian officials said the boxes were damaged, but data could be extracted from them.
The victims of the struck plane include 67 Canadians, 11 Ukraine, 17 Swedes, four British and four Afghans, and countries whose citizens were among the dead are pressing for Tehran to hand over the data of the Boeing 737 flight for analysis by Western experts, as well as providing compensation to the victims.
Tehran acknowledged that the Revolutionary Guards mistakenly shot down the plane that was en route to Kiev, and a video clip showed that it had hit two missiles thirty seconds apart between the first and second. The assassination of the American army, commander of the Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, in Baghdad.
The bodies of Ukrainian victims arrived today in Kiev, during an official ceremony attended by President Vladimir Zelinsky and Prime Minister Oleksey Goncharuk.