Tehran/The General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces stated that the helicopter in which President Ebrahim Raisí died followed the flight plan, no bullet holes have been found in the device and it caught fire once it crashed, so it sees no suspicious signs. in the accident, according to a preliminary investigation.
“There are no projectile impacts or similar damage to the remains of the helicopter,” indicated the report published late last night by the state agency IRNA.
The device followed the planned route and did not deviate from the flight plan, and in the crew’s conversations with the surveillance tower no “suspicious cases” were observed, indicated the armed forces of the Persian country. “After colliding with a mountain, the helicopter caught fire,” the investigation added.
The military also asserted that the complexity of the area, the fog and the low temperatures made rescue operations difficult, which is why the helicopter was not located until early in the morning, after it disappeared on Sunday afternoon.
“After colliding with a mountain, the helicopter caught fire,” the investigation added.
The General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces assured that a large number of documents and evidence regarding the accident have been collected, so more time is necessary to examine some of the parts and documents.
The publication of the report occurred after some Iranian media criticized the authorities for their handling of information about the incident and raised suspicions about its nature.
The newspaper Ham-Mihan criticized the Government for “providing erroneous and ambiguous information” in an article titled Continuation of weakness.
The conservative Jomhuri Eslami pointed to a possible foreign conspiracy and wondered why only the presidential helicopter of the three that made up the delegation disappeared and why, if it was possible to speak with any of the passengers by phone, it was not possible to locate the device before.
The helicopter disappeared after taking off on Sunday from the city of Tabriz in the northeast of the country, in the province of East Azerbaijan
The helicopter disappeared after taking off on Sunday from the northeastern city of Tabriz in East Azerbaijan province in what was initially described as a “forced landing.”
The ultra-conservative Raisí died in the accident along with Foreign Minister Hosein Amir Abdolahian and six other passengers.
After three days of mass funerals in several cities in the country, Raisí was buried yesterday in an important religious mausoleum in the city of Mashad. Iran will hold presidential elections on June 28 and until that date the former first vice president Mohammad Mojber will lead the Executive.
