Page 44 - IRANRptJun20

PS752 Tragedy - Ukrainian aviation investigation head suggests passengers were out of their seats
made necessary by efforts introduced by Iran and other countries in the battle against the pandemic.
“The number of air passengers reduced by 76% and flights by 90% during Nowruz [the Persian New Year] holidays [which ran from March 19-April 3], according to latest data released by Iran Airports Company,” he said. Revenues of Iranian airlines have dropped by a staggering 80% in recent weeks, with only a few flights going to international destinations including the UK, Turkey and Qatar.
According to Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKIA), on April 5, only two flights were recorded on its rota, including a return service from London with IranAir.
Ukrainian forensics head Alexander Ruvin from the Kyiv Research Institute of Forensics has suggested from evidence obtained that passengers on Ukrainian International Airlines (UIA) flight PS752 were out of their seats before two missiles hit the plane outside Tehran in early January, ​Glavcom​ reported.
His interview with the Ukrainian newspaper comes amid heightened tensions between Kyiv and Tehran, which have been edging towards international legal proceedings that would be pursued by Ukraine against the Iranian state. If Ukraine moves ahead with the action, it would mean the release of significantly more information about the airliner tragedy that the Tehran theocracy has endeavoured to keep under wraps.
Ruvin said that after the plane came down the Iranian side immediately went to remove all parts of the aircraft from the crash site while still allowing people in the vicinity to enter the crash grounds. He added that several mobile phones and tablets which belonged to the 176 deceased were taken from the Ukrainian team by the Iranians.
The Ukrainian official stated that the Iranian side repeatedly obfuscated during the investigation and blocked the foreign team from investigating the site.
“We did not find the lower part of the plane, we found only four seats, and the plane had 167 people plus crew,” he noted.
Earlier, on May 18, Ukraine said it would go to the ​UN International Court of Justice​ (ICJ) if negotiations with Iran over the incident did not progress satisfactorily.
“If negotiations reach an impasse, then we will be forced to appeal to the international arbitration court, the UN International Court of Justice. This is not only about Ukraine, but about a united front of the states of Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, Afghanistan and Ukraine,” Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Yevhen Yenin said, referring to other countries from where other victims of the tragedy came from.
He added that he hoped that Iran would fulfil its international obligations and hand over the black box flight recorders taken from the plane wreckage to enable their decryption.
9.1.4 ​Aerospace sector news
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said on April 22 that it has​ ​put its first military satellite into orbit​, ​IRNA reported on April 22. Named “Noor 1”, or “Light 1”, it was launched on a two-stage rocket that took off from Iran’s Central Desert, an official statement added. There was no independent confirmation of the success of the mission said to have placed the multipurpose satellite 425 kilometres above the Earth’s surface.
In recent years, several attempts by Iran to launch satellites into space have
44​ IRAN Country Report June 2020 www.intellinews.com