Thread by @FazelHawramy

This is what President Raisi’s chief of staff Gholam-Hossein Esmaili who was on the 3rd helicopter immediately behind Raisi’s (second) says happened when Raisi & Amir Abdollahian helicopter went down

- “we set off from the foot of the dam towards Tabriz and the weather was
1/9

Clear and crisp… around 30 to 35 minutes into the flight, just before the Sungun copper mine, there was a patch of cloud on a valley next to the mine which was on our route …there was no fog …maybe at the bottom of the valley but not in our route …
The cloud 2/9

was in similar altitude or just above our flight route… Captain Moustafavi who was in charge of the convoy and in charge of President Raisi’s helicopter asked other pilots to increase their altitude to reach above the cloud according to what our pilot later relayed to us… 3/9

We flew above the cloud, we were in the 3rd helicopter, President Raisi in the second and ahead of both of us was another helicopter … after 30 seconds of passing the cloud, our pilot realized that the main helicopter was not with us (the second helicopter carrying Raisi) …4/9

Increasing our altitude was normal and no turbulence occurred … then the cloud cleared and we could see the peak underneath our feet next to the Sungun cooper mine …

Because this helicopter did not come up [above the cloud] ,, our pilot turned around … I asked his copilot 5/9

why they turned around, he said one of our helicopters is not with us [disappeared] , we suspect that it has landed, we suspect it made an emergency landing. We have tried many times but our radio connect is lost and it does not respond to our calls. I asked how long ago 6/9

you had radio connection, the pilot said 1 min and 30 seconds ago. The captain asked us to increase altitude 1 min/ 30 second ago and it took less than a minute to increase altitude and for clouds to clear. We have lost radio connection, they are not responding, let’s turn 7/9

around and wait till they appear and let’s see what has happened … The pilot turned around and circled the area several times including above the cloud but could not see underneath the patch of cloud… and it was risky to fly underneath and there was no visibility. 8/9

It circled around one or two times, there was no news and the radio connection was not established so our pilot had no option and after 30 second, we landed at Sungun copper mine. 9/9