Iran will no longer share evidence from Ukraine airliner crash after leaked audio
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Another pilot witnessed the moment the plane was hit and alerted the control tower, a leaked recording showed. Ukraine confirmed its authenticity, and now Iran says it no longer wants to cooperate with Kyiv in the probe, DW reports.
France24 said that Iran is no longer sharing evidence from the investigation into the Ukraine airliner crash that killed 176 people with Kiev after audio from the investigation was leaked by Ukrainian media, the director in charge of accident investigations at Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization was quoted as saying on Monday.
France 24 also reports that the audio file was part of the evidence given to Ukrainian experts as part of the joint investigative team’s examination of the crash.
“The technical investigation team of the Ukrainian airline crash, in a strange move, published the secret audio file of the communications of a pilot of a plane that was flying at the same time as the Ukrainian plane,” Iran’s Hassan Rezaifar said, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency.
“This action by the Ukrainians led to us not sharing any more evidence with them.”
The announcement followed a leaked recording of an exchange between an Iranian air-traffic controller and an Iranian pilot purporting to show that authorities immediately knew a missile had downed a Ukrainian jetliner after takeoff from Tehran, despite days of denials by the Islamic Republic.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the recording’s authenticity in a report aired by a Ukrainian television channel on Sunday night.
In Tehran on Monday, Rezaifar acknowledged the recording was legitimate and said that it was handed over to Ukrainian officials.
