MOSCOW, July 23 (RIA Novosti) — Malaysian officials passed the black boxes from MH17 flight over to Dutch investigators five days after the Boeing 777 crash in eastern Ukraine, Agence France-Presse reported Wednesday citing the government of the Netherlands.
«The black boxes from flight MH17 have been handed over by Malaysian experts to the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) that is leading the international investigation," the Dutch foreign ministry said in a statement, according to AFP.
Earlier media reports suggested the flight recorders would be taken to a British laboratory in Farnborough for local experts' examination.
On Monday, the authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic handed over two flight data recorders recovered from the site of the plane crash to Malaysian representatives under the agreement that the UN International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) would have access to the black boxes.
British Prime Minister David Cameron later wrote in his Twitter that the United Kingdom "agreed Dutch request for air accident investigators at Farnborough to retrieve data from MH17 black boxes for international analysis."
Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed on July 17 near the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board, including 193 Dutch citizens.
Ukrainian authorities place the blame the independence supporters in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic for shooting down the plane with a missile, while the militia forces say they did not have the missiles to shoot a target flying at 33,000 feet.
