TEHRAN – The Iranian embassy in France announced on Tuesday that the preliminary analysis of the recovered data from the downed Ukrainian plane’s black boxes is underway in the BEA laboratory in France.

According to the embassy, a team of Civil Aviation Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran in a joint effort with the French side began to decode the black boxes of the Ukrainian plane the prior day, Mehr reported.

On the first day of this joint technical cooperation, a delegation of Iranian experts and a group of French laboratory experts succeeded in recovering the FDR (flight data recording) section in the black boxes of the plane, it added.

The Ukrainian passenger plane, with 176 people aboard, was mistaken for an invading missile. The tragic incident happened a few hours after Iran fired missiles at a U.S. airbase in western Iraq in retaliation for the January 3 assassination of General Qassem Soleimani. Following the retaliation attack, the Iranian military had been put on high alert. 

The victims of the crash included 82 Iranians, 63 Iranian-Canadians, 11 Ukrainians, 10 Swedes, four Afghans, three Germans, and three British nationals.

Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne announced on Sunday that the black boxes have arrived in France for analysis.

In a tweet, Champagne said the black boxes were expected to be taken to France’s BEA air accident investigation agency on Monday.

He added that Canadian transportation officials would be present during the analysis.

The remarks came after Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsen Baharvand announced that Iran has sent the black boxes to France.

Baharvand said the black boxes were taken to Paris on Friday and would be deciphered on Monday.

Earlier this month, Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Yevhen Yenin said that the volume of compensation for victims of the Ukrainian plane crash will be discussed when the technical investigation is completed.

“At this stage, technical investigation has not yet been completed. If it confirms the fact of unlawful interference, it will be possible to proceed to the second phase of the negotiation process and more specifically discuss the volume of compensation. It’s still too early to talk about something,” Yenin told Ukraine 24 TV channel in an interview published on July 6.

He also said, “Black boxes have not been sent to France yet. As of today, we have another promise from the Iranian side to do this on July 20. A couple of days ago we received from the French authorities their consent to accept two of our experts who will participate in the process as members of the technical investigation group.”

MH/PA