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Prosecutor rules out Smolensk disaster explosion theory

PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge 08.04.2014 09:30
The District Military Prosecutor in Warsaw has ruled out any possibility that an explosion occurred aboard the Polish presidential plane that crashed in Smolensk on 10 April 2010.

District
District Military Prosecutor Colonel Ireneusz Szelag (R) and his deputy Colonel Ryszard Filipowicz (L). Photo: PAP/Pawel Supernak

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, just days before the fourth anniversary of the crash, Colonel Ireneusz Szelag presented 1300 pages of documentation, outlining the findings of experts at the Central Forensic Laboratory of the Police Headquarters.

“After analysing 700 samples, experts found no traces that an explosion had taken place aboard the Tu-154 plane,” he said.

“The experts had unimpeded access to the site of the catastrophe, and to the place where the wreck of the plane is being stored.”

Colonel Szelag reaffirmed that traces of explosive substances were neither found on the remains of victims nor on parts of the wreckage and other items found at the crash site.

A politicised dispute

Antoni Macierewicz, deputy leader of opposition party Law and Justice was swift to reject the findings of the forensic experts.

“The assessment is unreliable, but the problem runs deeper than that,” he claimed.

“There are allegations that falsification of evidence could have occurred,” he said.

The Law and Justice party has consistently challenged both Polish and Russian state reports on the crash.

Although representatives of all the major political parties were aboard the 10 April 2010 flight to Russia's military airport at Smolensk, the delegation was led by the late President Lech Kaczynski, whose twin brother Jaroslaw is the current head of Law and Justice.

“Over the last few years, Antoni Macierewicz and Jaroslaw Kaczynski have done everything they could to get into the heads of millions of Poles that something more than a catastrophe took place in Smolensk,” Krzysztof Gawkowski, MP for the Democratic Left Alliance said on Tuesday in an interview with Polish Radio.

Law and Justice's traditionally anti-Russian rhetoric was compounded by the crash, and the polarisation of public opinion over the disaster has made the issue a highly politicised one for both Kaczynski's party and Prime Minister Donald Tusk's Civic Platform.

“It's in the interests of Law and Justice and Civic Platform to stir the Smolensk cauldron,” MP Patryk Jaki of minority party United Poland told Polish Radio in today's studio debate.

With elections to the EU parliament due on 25 May, the issue remains a vote-swinger for both parties. (nh)

Source: PAP/IAR

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