Baku. January 6th. INTERFAX - Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that it remains unclear why the Embraer 190 aircraft of Azerbaijan Airlines CJSC (AZAL), which operated a Baku-Grozny flight and crashed in Kazakhstan, was sent to Aktau.
"The process of decrypting the black boxes has begun. At our insistence, this process is being carried out in Brazil. (...) Despite all the suggestions and persistence, we categorically objected to the opening of the black boxes by the Interstate Aviation Committee. Because the objectivity here could be questioned. To put it in legal terms, there could be a clash of interests here. Therefore, with the participation of representatives of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Russia, an analysis of the black boxes has begun in Brazil, and information about this will probably be provided in the near future," Aliyev said on Monday at a meeting with family members of the crew members killed in the plane crash and the surviving flight attendants.
According to him, "it is clear as day that the aircraft was brought into an uncontrolled state by means of electronic warfare (EW)."
"It is also obvious that the plane was damaged as a result of fire opened from the ground. But why was the plane sent to Aktau? We don't have any information about this yet. Did this happen by decision of local air traffic controllers, or did the pilots realize that electronic warfare in Russian airspace would no longer allow them to land, and made this choice themselves? We don't have any information about this yet. Naturally, after decrypting the black boxes, all this information will appear," he stressed.
Aliev added that the fact that the black boxes were sent to Brazil also shows that Azerbaijan demands objectivity.
"I already talked about this after the farewell ceremony with the crew: if we had seen from the very first minutes or hours from the official circles of the Russian Federation an attempt to objectively investigate this tragedy, we would most likely have agreed that the decryption of the black boxes would be carried out by the Interstate Aviation Committee. (...) But when we saw an attempt to hush up this case, to blame it on some birds or an explosion of a gas cylinder, naturally, I and the Azerbaijani public had serious doubts about the objectivity of the investigation by this structure. Now that the black boxes are being decrypted, I am sure that in the near future we will know the preliminary result, and everything will fall into place and the whole picture of the tragedy will be known. And this, of course, will be an important moment in the full investigation of this tragedy and the punishment of those responsible for it," the President of Azerbaijan said.
On December 25, 2024, an Embraer aircraft operated by Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL), en route from Baku to Grozny, crashed near Aktau. There were 67 people on board, including five crew members. Of these, 42 are citizens of Azerbaijan, 16 are citizens of Russia, 6 are citizens of Kazakhstan, and 3 are citizens of Kyrgyzstan. 38 people died.
On December 29, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that on December 27, Azerbaijan handed over three demands to the Russian side in connection with the crash of the Azerbaijani AZAL airliner, one of which has already been fulfilled by the Russian side.
"We have clearly expressed our demands to the Russian side, they were officially handed over on December 27. What are they? First of all, the Russian side should apologize to Azerbaijan. Secondly, admit your guilt. Thirdly, the perpetrators must be punished, brought to criminal responsibility, and the damage to the Azerbaijani state, as well as to the injured passengers and crew members, must be compensated. These are our conditions. The first of these conditions was met yesterday," Aliyev said in an interview with the state-run AzTV channel. He expressed hope that other conditions of the Azerbaijani side will be fulfilled.
