Turkish Transport Minister Points To Strange Circumstance On Raisi's Helicopter

Important equipment was not working.

Turkish Transport Minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu has said that according to preliminary investigations, the helicopter on which Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi crashed either did not have a transponder or it was switched off.

This was reported by The Guardian.

Uraloglu emphasised that after receiving the news of the crash, Turkish authorities checked for the presence of a signal from the helicopter's transponder, a device that transmits information about an aircraft's altitude and location.

"But, unfortunately, we believe it is likely that the transponder system was switched off or it was not on the helicopter," he said.

According to The Guardian, it also emerged that before the crash, officials had urged the Iranian government to purchase two Russian helicopters for its leaders amid concerns about maintaining the fleet of old helicopters.

On May 19, Iranian media reported that the helicopter carrying Raisi had likely crashed.

In the morning of May 20, Reuters, citing an Iranian official, wrote that Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi's helicopter had completely burned up in the crash. It seemed likely that all the passengers had died.

Rescuers have found the bodies of those killed in the helicopter crash in Iran, among them President Ibrahim Raisi. Search and rescue operations have been halted.