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Smolensk crash samples in UK for testing

PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek 25.05.2017 20:30
Samples from the Polish presidential plane that crashed in Russia in 2010 have been sent to the UK to be tested for traces of explosives, a spokeswoman for the Polish prosecution has said.
The wreckage of the presidential plane in 2010. Photo: Wikimedia CommonsThe wreckage of the presidential plane in 2010. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

“Traces secured during inspections of the plane in 2012-2013 have been sent for physio-chemical testing at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory in Kent (southeastern UK),” the spokeswoman said.

Polish prosecutors in April announced that laboratories in Italy, Spain and two in the UK would conduct tests for explosives on samples from the exhumed bodies of the victims and from the Tupolev Tu-154 model plane.

A government commission, set up after the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in 2015, has claimed that the presidential plane was probably brought down by an explosion, and that Russian air traffic controllers deliberately misled Polish pilots about their location as they approached the runway of the Smolensk military airport in western Russia on 10 April 2010.

The crash killed then-President Lech Kaczyński, from the PiS party, his wife, and 94 others, many of them top government and military officials.

PiS, headed by the late president's twin brother Jarosław Kaczyński, has long challenged an official report into the crash 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.

Despite repeated requests from Warsaw, Russia has refused to return the wreckage of the plane back to Poland. (vb/pk)

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