Iran agrees to pay compensation to Ukraine for downed airliner
Iranian authorities "expressed readiness" to pay compensation to Ukraine for the Boeing airliner, which was shot down near Tehran, said the official representative of Iran’s Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Republic Abbas Mousavi as quoted by IRNA news agency.
But this "will take time," Mousavi added. According to him, it is necessary to discuss "various technical and legal aspects" of the situation.
The Boeing 737-800 of International Airlines of Ukraine, en route from Tehran to Kyiv, crashed on January 8 shortly after taking off from the Iranian capital. All 176 people on board were killed. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for the downing of the airliner only a few days later, explaining that the aircraft had been mistaken for a cruise missile.
A month later, Iran admitted failing to independently decipher the airliner's flight recorders due to a lack of necessary technology. Restrictive measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic prevented foreign specialists from coming to the country to analyze the black boxes. In July, the French Civil Aviation Safety Investigation and Analysis Bureau began deciphering them.