Iran will send black box of downed Ukrainian airliner to be decoded in France

The black box of the Ukrainian passenger jet that was downed by the Iranian military will be examined in France, after Paris, the US and Canada refused to send software needed for its analysis, Iran's chief investigator said.

Hassan Rezaeifar, the chief of Iran's probe into the crash, told IRNA on Saturday that the country lacks the technology needed to decode and extract the information in the black box, an onboard device that records flight data.

Tehran had originally asked Canada, France and the US to send over the required equipment and software, but they refused, Rezaeifar said. Iran then proposed for the black box to be decoded at an "impartial" facility overseas, where the data could be extracted without any damage to it. France was chosen because it has an agreement with Iran for extracting data from flight recorders, the official explained.

The lead investigator stated the decision was supported by the US, as well as Ukraine, Canada, Britain and Sweden, whose citizens were on board the doomed plane.

France has formally requested a probe by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) into the plane crash, Ukrainian President's Administration said in a statement on Volodymyr Zelensky's phone call with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron.They have agreed that French experts will work on extracting the data from the flight recorder.

Iran admitted that its air defenses mistook the plane for a "hostile target" and shot it down shortly after takeoff from Tehran on Wednesday, killing all 176 people on board. While accepting responsibility for the tragedy, the Iranian Army said it was on high alert after US President Donald Trump threatened to bomb targets on Iranian territory during the most-recent flare-up of US-Iranian tensions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Iran to conduct a transparent investigation of the incident without delay, and to make sure that Ukrainian experts participate in the probe. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in turn, said that the information about what happened must be made public.

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