Türkiye: A serious malfunction in Iranian president’s helicopter caused to crash
Türkiye’s transport minister announced on Monday that the helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi wasn’t equipped with a signaling system or that the system was disabled when it crashed on Sunday.
Turkish Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu told reporters, “We found out that the helicopter’s signaling system was probably out of order, or that it wasn’t equipped with it”.
“If the system was working, we would have received the signals, but they didn’t get us,” he said, without saying whether he was talking about the transponder or the helicopter’s distress beacon.
Ankara said it deployed a Turkish Akinci drone at the crash site on Sunday evening, helping locate the wreckage of the helicopter carrying President Raisi, which was found at dawn Monday in northwestern Iran.
The old US made Bell 212 helicopter disappeared from radar on Sunday afternoon as it flew over rugged forested terrain in bad weather conditions with heavy rain and fog.
Among the nine passengers on board the helicopter was Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the governor of East Azerbaijan province, the main imam in the region, as well as the president’s security chief and three crew members, all of whom died.
Iran declared five days of national mourning from Monday.
