'No evidence of tampering'
July 24, 2014
On Wednesday, the Dutch Safety Board (OVV) announced that it had successfully downloaded recordings from the black box cockpit voice recorder - with no apparent sign of interference with the data.
"No evidence or indications of manipulation of the recorder was found," the OVV announced in a statement. "The data was successfully downloaded and the flight data recorder contained valid data of the flight," according to the OVV.
The recorders, which are in fact orange in color, were salvaged from wreckage in eastern Ukraine by separatists amid an international outcry about the treatment of evidence and bodies at the crash site.
The boxes were handed over to OVV officials on Tuesday and taken for analysis at the Air Accidents Investigation Branch headquarters in southern England.
AAIB experts are tasked with extracting information from the cockpit voice recorder, which should yield hours of pilots' conversations - plus flight data contents. Independent military analysts have said that the signs at present point to a surface-to-air missile system like the Russian-made SA-11 Buk having been used.
Separatists and Ukrainian government forces have blamed each other for the downing of the plane, fueling fears that the rebels might have interfered with the evidence - particularly that from the black box.
Ground team hampered
A Dutch team leading the ground investigation into the disaster in which 298 people died - 193 of them from the Netherlands - was said to be stuck in Kyiv on Thursday, unable to join international investigators already at the crash site. Heavy fighting was said to be going on nearby.
Two more planes, carrying a total of 74 coffins, landed in the Dutch city of Eindhoven on Thursday, to be taken to a military barracks for forensic examination and identification.
The coffins were given the same honors as 40 others that arrived on Wednesday, a day of national mourning in the Netherlands.
rc/mkg (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)