The head of the Iranian President’s Office, Gholam Esmaili, stated on Tuesday that the helicopter in which the late President Ebrahim Raisi was travelling faced a “cloud” during its flight, prompting its pilot to rise its altitude before it disappeared.
Esmaili added, in statements reported by the official Iranian news agency “IRNA,” that, “After the inauguration ceremony of the Qayz border dam shared with Azerbaijan, we headed to the city of Tabriz in clear weather. Nevertheless, in the middle of the travel, we encountered clouds. The pilot of the helicopter carrying the president ordered an increase in altitude when he reached those clouds, but after the altitude grew, there was no trace of the President of the Republic’s helicopter.”
The head of the Iranian president’s office revealed that “Since the announcement of the interruption of radio contact with the president’s helicopter, tries started to contact the president’s guard, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, the imam of Tabriz, and the governor of Tabriz, without obtaining any response from them.”
Esmaili continued, saying: “He attempted to reach the pilot of the president’s helicopter, but the imam of Tabriz answered instead. A call was made to the mobile phone of the pilot, Captain Mustafawi, but instead of Captain Mustafawi, the imam of Tabriz, Ali Al Hashem, answered, saying, ‘I am not well, and we fell into the valley.’”
He continued: “Then we called Al Hashem again and asked him, ‘Where are you?’ He responded by saying, ‘I don’t know, I’m among the trees.’ So I asked him, ‘How are the others? Do you see them?’ Al Hashem said, ‘I don’t see anyone. I am alone and don’t know what happened. There is no one around me.’”
The head of the Iranian president’s office noted, “It became apparent after the call that they had been implicated in an accident,” adding that he later learned that the other passengers of the helicopter had died instantly and that the condition of the bodies indicated that the passengers had died immediately after the accident, according to the IRNA agency.
On Monday morning, Iran announced the death of President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian, and other officials following the crash of the helicopter they were travelling in, in East Azerbaijan Province, northwest of Iran, on Sunday.