Polish ex-PM Kopacz summoned in Smolensk probe
PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk
30.05.2017 15:45
Former Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz has been summoned for questioning as prosecutors reinvestigate the 2010 crash of a Polish presidential plane in western Russia, a spokeswoman for the State Prosecution has said.
Ewa Kopacz. Photo: flickr.com/Platforma Obywatelska RP (CC BY-SA 2.0)
The spokeswoman said that the former prime minister is a witness in an investigation into why Polish authorities did not conduct autopsies on the victims of the crash. The spokeswoman did not say when Kopacz would be questioned.
Earlier this month, European Council President Donald Tusk, who was Poland's prime minister at the time of the disaster, was summoned as a witness in a probe into possible negligence by Polish public officials who allegedly did not ask Russian authorities to allow a Polish team to conduct autopsies on the crash victims.
In 2011, Russian medical records were called into question, and nine exhumations showed that parts of six bodies had been placed in the wrong graves.
Experts at the time concluded that up to 90 percent of the medical records compiled by the Russians were wrong.
On 10 April, 2010, a Polish presidential plane crashed in Smolensk, western Russia, killing all 96 on board, including then-President Lech Kaczyński and dozens of other top political and military personnel.
The conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, headed by the twin of the late president, launched a new investigation into the crash after coming to power in late 2015, having long challenged an official report into the disaster, issued by the previous Polish government, which cited a catalogue of errors on the Polish side while also pointing to errors made by Russian staff at the control tower of Smolensk Military Airport.
A Russian report placed all the blame on the Poles.
(vb/pk)