The ‘black boxes’ of the plane shot down by Iran were rendered useless after the impact of the first missile.

The Iranian government has released the audios captured by the black boxes of the Ukrainian plane that shot down in January, revealing that the records were disabled a few seconds after the impact of the first missile against the flight.

Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister, Yevhen Jenin, had already announced at the end of July that initial analysis of the ‘black boxes’ of the Boeing aircraft of Ukraine International Airlines, shot down by mistake by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard shortly after take-off from Tehran on January 8, confirm that there was “illegal interference”.

Now, Iran has specified that the black boxes stopped working shortly after the plane was hit by the first of two missiles in January, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

The flight data recording shows pilots listening for 19 seconds after the first missile hit, according to the head of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, Touraj Dehghani. The plane was hit by the second missile 25 seconds later.

“The first missile caused considerable damage to the plane,” which made the flight recorders “inoperative 19 seconds after impact,” Dehghani said.

He said data is available on when the second missile exploded, before indicating that the publication of this information is only intended to prevent similar incidents and should not be used to politicize the issue.

The Boeing 737 was shot down near Tehran shortly after the start of flight PS752 from Tehran to Kiev, killing 176 people. At first, Iranian authorities said it was an accident but days later admitted it was shot down by several missiles launched by a “mistake” of the Revolutionary Guard.

By Notimerica