Today is anniversary of UIA plane crash in Iran: investigation is still ongoing

Exactly one year ago, on January 8, 2020, an UIA plane crashed in Iran. The passenger board was shot down by two Iranian military missiles. As a result, 176 people died, including 11 Ukrainians. The investigation is still pending, and talks with Iran are dragging on.

RBC-Ukraine recalls.

According to the Iranian party, the crash of a passenger plane near Tehran in January last year was due to the "human factor."

The air defense system wasn't reset after it was moved. Therefore, the operator identified the aircraft as an enemy target moving towards Tehran. Without receiving a response from the coordination center, it launched the first missile on the plane, and then the second. However, the UIA board took off from the city airport, not the other way around.

Three rounds of talks between Ukraine and Iran have already taken place during the investigation into the causes of the plane crash.

On July 29, Tehran agreed to pay compensation to the families of the victims. In the second round, the parties failed to make progress. The Prosecutor's General Office of Ukraine accused Iran of delaying the investigation and ignoring requests for cooperation.

On the eve of the catastrophe anniversary, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba stated that the negotiation process had failed. The Iranian party didn't fulfill the agreement, in a result, Ukraine failed to achieve the result that it had hoped for.

On December 31, 2020, Iran submitted to Ukraine a technical draft report on the causes of the catastrophe. Its ready status was announced several weeks earlier. Foreign Ministry stressed the importance of this stage for further cooperation between the parties.

A special group of Iranian experts was set up to investigate the causes of the catastrophe, and representatives of the State Emergency Service, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the National Police of Ukraine also worked at the crash site. However, despite the Ukrainian party's proposal for joint investigative actions, they weren't carried out. Iran hadn't agreed on a date for starting talks with Ukraine for a long time.

It took over six months to decipher the "black" boxes. Initially, the Iranian party refused to hand them over to Boeing, announcing that the decryption would be carried out by a state laboratory, then the process was suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the meantime, Ukraine agreed to involve specialists from France to process data from flight recorders. Iran agreed to negotiate "black boxes" only 6 months after the accident. The transcript was conducted by French experts on July 20, 2020. The transcript confirmed the fact of external interference in the operation of the aircraft.

Relatives of those killed in the plane crash near Tehran will receive compensation in the amount of 150 thousand dollars or their equivalent in other currencies.

The Iranian government has instructed their officials to make payments as soon as possible. The resolution also states that compensation should be provided to all "with no discrimination on grounds of nationality or citizenship" under the laws of the countries. In response to this statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine noted that the amount of compensation should be determined through negotiations.

To recap, the UIA catastrophe was the first in the history of the airline and one of the largest 50 disasters in the history of world aviation.

Iranian authorities have denied the missile attack on the plane for three days, despite intelligence reports from several countries that the liner was shot down by Iranian air defenses. Two surface-to-air missiles were fired at the plane.

It was not until January 11 that President Hassan Rouhani said the disaster was due to "human error." The air defense operator decided to launch missiles without receiving confirmation from the command center.