Image Source: TRIBUNE

Iran said it had asked the US and French authorities for equipment to download information from black boxes on a downed Ukrainian airliner, potentially angering countries that want the recorders analyzed abroad.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, which lost 57 of the 176 people killed in the crash, said Iran did not have the ability to read the data and he demanded the cockpit and flight recorders should be sent to France. Kiev wants the recorders sent to Ukraine.

The US-built Boeing 737 flown by Ukraine International Airlines was shot down in error by Iranian forces on January 8 during a period of tit-for-tat military strikes that included the killing by the United States of a senior Iranian general on Jan. 3.

Tehran, already embroiled in a long-running standoff with the United States over its nuclear program, has given mixed signals about whether it would hand over the recorders.

An Iranian aviation official had said on Saturday the black boxes would be sent to Ukraine, only to backtrack in comments reported a day later, saying they would be analyzed at home.