Protesters attempt to block a police van carrying an intruder from the cemetery: photo - PAP/Bartlomiej Zborowski
The exhumation at Warsaw's Powazki cemetery on Tuesday morning is understood to have been that of fellow crash victim Teresa Walewska-Przyjalkowska, former president of a memorial foundation connected with the WWII Katyn Crime (Fundacja Golgota-Wschodu).
It was carried out amid rowdy scenes as protesters attempted to force their way into the cemetery.
The exhumation follows that of the remains of Anna Walentynowicz in Gdansk on Monday morning, as ordered by the Military District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw.
The family of Anna Walentyowicz had claimed that the original autopsy carried out in Russia immediately after the 2010 air crash suggested confusion with a second woman, most probably Teresa Walewska-Przyjalkowska.
Nevertheless, authorities have yet to officially confirm that it was Teresa Walewska-Przyjalkowska who was exhumed on Tuesday.
A crowd connected with the right-wing Gazeta Polska newspaper – a publication that has suggested that sabotage caused the 2010 plane crash - gathered at the gates of the Warsaw cemetery on Tuesday morning as the exhumation was being carried out.
Several people tried to scramble over the wall to enter the graveyard, and one man was detained by police, allegedly documentary director Grzegorz Braun.
Antoni Macierewicz, MP from the conservative Law and Justice party, was among those who attempted to block the police van carrying the detainee to the police station.
Faulty equipment delays autopsy
Meanwhile, there have been delays to the second autopsy on Anna Walentyowicz.
The remains of the Solidarity activist were transported to the Department of Forensic Medicine in Bydgoszcz on Monday morning.
However, it transpired that the CT scanner due to be used in the autopsy was broken.
After several hours, Anna Walentynowicz's remains were removed to Krakow, where most probably the autopsy of the second Smolensk victim will also take place.
Questions regarding autopsies
Some 96 people, taking in the late President Lech Kaczynski and his the entire delegation, died in the April 2010 Smolensk crash.
The delegates were due to take part in tributes commemorating the 70th anniversary of the WWII Katyn Crime.
All in all, five victims have now been exhumed since the initial wave of burials.
These include two MPs from Kaczynski's former party (Law and Justice), Przemyslaw Gosiewski and Zbigniew Wassermann, as well as Janusz Kurtyka, the former head of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a state body charged with investigating crimes against Polish citizens.
Poland's current prime minister, Donald Tusk, has commented that imperfections in the Russian autopsies were not surprising given the stark realities of the crash.
“You know all too well what state the bodies were in after the crash,” he told journalists at a press conference in March.
He described families' bids to carry out second autopsies as“a very delicate matter.”
Anna Walentynowicz was one if the iconic figures of the Solidarity Movement. It was her firing from the former Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk – on account of her participation in an illegal trade union – that prompted the now legendary strike led by Lech Walesa in August 1980. (nh)