Iran agrees to send Ukrainian plane crash black boxes to Kiev, official says

Iran’s aviation authority has agreed to send black boxes from a downed Ukrainian jetliner to Kiev for analysis, Iran’s representative at the United Nations’ aviation agency told Reuters.

Farhad Parvaresh, who heads Iran’s delegation at the UN’s Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization, said Tehran’s civil aviation authority had also invited other interested countries to participate in reading the data, Global News reports.

The move ends a two-month stand-off over the fate of the recordings from the jet, which was shot down by the Iranian military on Jan 8 with the loss of all 176 people on board.

Two sources directly familiar with the matter said Iran had made the announcement to ICAO’s governing council.

“They did agree … that in the next two weeks or so they will bring the black boxes to Ukraine for reading and if that isn’t possible they would go to France,” a Canadian government source said. ICAO was not immediately available for comment.