Kopacz, who headed a Civic Platform-led government that lost parliamentary elections in 2015, is a witness in an investigation into why Polish authorities did not conduct autopsies on the victims of the crash.
Emerging from Wednesday’s hearing, Kopacz told reporters that a decision on performing autopsies had not been within her powers.
She said such a decision must be issued by a prosecutor, not a doctor, politician or official.
She added that in the wake of the 2010 catastrophe she had travelled to Russia not as a representative of the Polish government, but to provide help to the families of the victims. She was Poland’s heath minister at the time of the disaster.
Fierce criticism
Kopacz has been fiercely criticised by politicians from Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party and by some families of the victims over what they say was a string of errors in handling the aftermath of the crash.
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.
Victim mix-ups
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 officials.
The conservative Law and Justice party, headed by the twin of the late president, launched a new investigation into the crash after coming to power in late 2015.
PiS had 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.
(pk)
Source: IAR