No explosives involved in Smolensk crash: Warsaw court

"The court has no reason to believe that the Smolensk disaster was caused by an attack using explosives,” judge Paweł Dobosz said on Tuesday during the closing speech in the case of Paweł Bielawny, the former deputy head of the Government Protection Bureau (BOR), which is in charge of VIP security.

Bielawny was found guilty of neglecting his duties in relation to the 2010 crash which killed 96 people, including President Lech Kaczyński.

“BOR properly checked the Tu-154 plane for explosives before the flight on 10 April,” judge Dobosz said.

Earlier in June, Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński, twin of the late president, said that uncovering the “truth about the Smolensk catastrophe” will help restore "moral order" in Poland.

“Part of this plan; the restoration of dignity, the rebuilding of strength and moral order in our country, must be arriving at the truth about the Smolensk catastrophe, while also commemorating its victims,” Kaczyński said.

The Law and Justice government is holding an investigation into the reasons for the crash, which some in the party suspect was the result of a plot targeting top Polish officials.

Official Polish and Russian military reports were published in recent years on the causes of the tragedy, which happened in dense fog on approach to a military airfield lacking ground identification radar.

The Polish report 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. Meanwhile, the Russian report placed all the blame on the Poles.

The wreckage of the plane has never been handed over by Russia to Polish authorities.