In his video address to the nation, the President said, “We will certainly know the truth. To this end, an independent and full investigation will be carried out in compliance with norms of international law. The committee set up by the Iran Civil Aviation Organization will supervise the air crash investigation. We expect that Ukrainian experts will take part in the work of the committee, particularly in analyzing the data of the black boxes. I’m calling on the international community, particularly Canada, to assist with the investigation of the circumstances surrounding the crash”.
On the same day, the Ukrainian President visited Boryspil Airport in Kyiv where he laid flowers to commemorate the victims of the air accident. He declared January 9 a day of national mourning in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, politicians and foreign diplomats offer their condolences to those affected by the tragedy that has happened to the Ukrainian passenger plane. The Secretary General of the United Nations, the President of the European Parliament, the President of the Russian Federation, the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, the U.S. Secretary of State, the Foreign Affairs Minister of Israel and other top-ranking executives of many countries have offered their deepest condolences. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that his country expects to play a significant role in Iran’s investigation of the plane crash that has killed 63 citizens of Canada.
President of Iran Hassan Rouhani commented on the catastrophe, “All Iranians are deeply saddened by the plane accident in Tehran that has claimed lives of many Iranians including students and people of other nationalities”.
On Thursday, January 9, Oleksiy Danylov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, said that a team of Ukrainian experts had arrived at the crash site outside Tehran and would search for missile fragments. They will assist in the investigation of the crash causes, the identification and repatriation of the bodies of the dead Ukrainians. In the words of Danylov, the Council considers several scenarios for Wednesday's disaster including a missile strike possibly by a Tor missile system as information has surfaced on the Internet about elements of a missile being found near the site of the crash. “Other scenarios include a terrorist act committed on board the aircraft, an engine failure, or a collision with a drone or a bird”, said Danylov.
On Thursday, January 9, Iranian investigators informed that both black boxes that contain technical data about the plane’s performance and recordings of conversations between the pilots in the cockpit had been found. Unfortunately, the boxes have been damaged and parts of their memory have been lost. Nevertheless, the analyses of the data in the black boxes will be carried out in Iran as Tehran has ruled out the handing them over to the Boeing company, which is the manufacturer of the crashed plane. Information to this effect has been disclosed by Hassan Razaeifar, the head of the commission for accidents in the Iran CAO.
Because on the Internet appeared unverified photographs of fragments of a Russia-made Tor missile that have been allegedly discovered at the crash site, Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, the website of Internet investigative journalists, has announced that they are going to focus on the version of the plane accident near Tehran that has occurred as the result of a strike by an anti-aircraft missile.
The newspaper Holos Ukrainy
