MOSCOW, May 22. The head of the Iranian presidential administration, Gholam-hossein Esmaili, who accompanied Ebrahim Raisi in another helicopter, said that the weather at the time of the plane crash was flying, and one of the passengers of the crashed helicopter was alive for several hours, his words were quoted by the IRNA agency.< br>““Perhaps there was fog in the depths of the gorge, but there was no fog along the trajectory of our flight. The clouds were slightly higher than the helicopter,” said Esmaili.
According to the official, the crew of the helicopter in which he was flying noticed the disappearance of the presidential board approximately 30 seconds after its pilot ordered the remaining crews to gain altitude to rise above the clouds. After the disappearance of Raisi's helicopter, the crew of the second plane went in search of him and tried to get in touch with him.
As a result, the pilots managed to call the imam of the city of Tabriz, Sayed Mohammad Ali Al-Hashem, who was on board with Raisi. The crew, Esmaili said, remained in contact with him for several hours before his death. From his words, it became clear that the presidential helicopter crashed.
“»I don’t feel well, I don’t know what happened, I don’t know where I am, I’m under the trees, I don’t know, I don’t see anyone, I’m alone «, the head of the presidential administration quoted the imam as saying.
The helicopter carrying Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian and other officials crashed on May 19 in the north-west of the country in the Verzegan region. On the morning of May 20, Iranian Vice President Mohsen Mansouri confirmed reports that the president and his delegation had died in a helicopter crash. The delegation was returning after a visit to Azerbaijan, where Raisi and his Azerbaijani colleague Ilham Aliyev participated in the opening ceremony of the Giz Galasy hydroelectric complex and the commissioning of the Khudaferin hydroelectric complex on the border Araks River.