Iran refuses to give Ukrainian plane’s black boxes to US
TEHRAN (AFP) — As investigators sift through the smouldering wreckage of an aircraft that crashed soon after take-off from Tehran, contradictory reports have emerged about what might have caused the Boeing 737-800 to abruptly plunge out of the sky, according to a report in Bloomberg.
Iranian authorities initially blamed “technical” causes, then said an engine fire most likely led to the loss of the Ukraine International Airlines plane on Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board.
The Ukrainian embassy in Tehran at first ruled out terrorism, then amended its statement to offer no comment on possible causes.
Given that the crash of Flight 752 came hours after a barrage of Iranian missiles were fired on US bases in Iraq, speculation also turned to a possible accidental attack by Tehran’s own air defense system, Bloomberg said.
The recently serviced, threeyear-old plane went down without a distress call and after its global-positioning transmissions were cut off mid-air – unusual for a crash. A video purportedly shot by a bystander shows flames coming from the aircraft as it streaked across the night sky and burst into a fireball on impact.
Meanwhile, the investigation is being hampered by the international tension between Iran and the US.
The head of Iran’s civil aviation organization, Ali Abedzadeh, said that Iran would cooperate with Ukraine but not send the black boxes to the United States, which has no diplomatic relations with Tehran.
Under the rules of the International Civil Aviation Organization, of which Iran, Ukraine and the US are all members, air crash investigations are led by the country where the accident occurred.