Iranian authorities promised on Wednesday in Montreal to transfer the black boxes of the Ukrainian plane shot down by Tehran on January 8 to Ukraine or France, news greeted with caution by Ottawa. The announcement was made by Iranian Ambassador to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Farhad Parvaresh during a meeting of this UN institution Wednesday morning at its headquarters in Montreal, according to concordant sources .
"The Iranian authorities affirmed this morning (...) that they had made the decision to transfer the black boxes from Iran to Ukraine or France," reacted Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs François-Philippe Champagne at a press point. "It is a step in the right direction but obviously I continue to judge Iran by their actions and not by their words," he added.
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Before the ICAO Council, Canadian Minister of Transport Marc Garneau once again put pressure on Iran to comply with its international obligations. "We cannot learn from this tragic attack against flight PS752 unless all the facts are known and analyzed," he said. "Iran must act now and provide for the reading of flight recorders, and thus demonstrate its firm will to provide a full and transparent report on this event, which is in accordance with its international obligations ," he insisted. . "Canadians and the international community simply cannot wait any longer . " ICAO itself called on Iran to "investigate the accident as soon as possible" .
Decrypting these boxes could help understand the circumstances leading to the crash of Ukrainian International Airlines flight PS752 to Kiev. The plane was shot down in error by an Iranian missile a few minutes after taking off from Tehran on January 8. Iran acknowledged that the two boxes were damaged and that it lacked the technical capacity to extract the data from them, but had so far ruled out handing them over to a third country. Canada has repeatedly called on Iran, which admitted that it shot down the plane "by mistake" , to hand over the black boxes to Ukraine or France.
Of the 176 victims of the crash, 57 were Canadian citizens and 29 others had permanent resident status in Canada.