Canadian officials are calling on Iran to send the cockpit voice and flight data recorders from Ukrainian International Flight 752 to either France or Ukraine to download the information they contain. Transportation Safety Board officials say the Iranians don’t have the technology to properly retrieve the information and the data is vital to the investigation. Two TSB investigators are on their way back to Canada after spending eight days at the crash site. TSB Chair Kathy Fox said they got good cooperation from Iranian officials.
Iran has already admitted to shooting the airliner down by mistake with two Soviet-made ground-to-air missiles. The missiles had proximity warheads that showered the aircraft in white hot shrapnel.Canada has a major interest in the investigation since 57 of the passengers were citizens and 29 were permanent residents. A total of 138 of the 176 people on board were connecting to Canada through Kiev. Most were students or faculty from Canadian universities returning from the Christmas break.