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Prosecutors lied over Polish presidential plane crash: journalist

PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk 26.03.2019 14:08
Prosecutors lied as part of a scheme to prevent the public from being aware that traces of explosives were found on the wreckage of a Polish presidential plane that crashed in Russia in 2010, an investigative journalist has alleged.
The wreckage of the Polish presidential plane shortly after the crash. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/staszewski/CC BY-SA 2.5The wreckage of the Polish presidential plane shortly after the crash. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/staszewski/CC BY-SA 2.5

The claim by Cezary Gmyz, who is a Berlin correspondent for Polish state broadcaster TVP, follows a report that a British laboratory has found traces of explosives in samples from the Polish plane.

Gmyz and three other journalists were fired by the Rzeczpospolita daily after writing an article in 2012 headlined “TNT on the wreckage of the Tupolev," referring to the Polish presidential jet.

Gmyz told public broadcaster Polish Radio on Monday: “In my opinion, someone should be held responsible for lies by prosecutors,” when the previous government was in power in Poland.

‘Traces of explosive materials’

He added: “From the beginning, I was convinced that this was an organised initiative, the purpose of which was to prevent the public from being aware that traces of explosive materials were found on the … wreckage.”

Findings by the Forensic Explosives Laboratory (FEL) in Britain appear to challenge official reports by Russian and Polish investigators that blamed pilot error for the 2010 plane crash, which killed 96 people, including then-Polish President Lech Kaczyński, Poland’s Sieci weekly has reported.

The weekly’s Marek Pyza and Marcin Wikło said they had established that the Forensic Explosives Laboratory, a unit overseen by the UK Ministry of Defence, several weeks ago sent a letter to Polish prosecutors in which the lab said that samples it had received for testing contained traces of substances used for the production of explosives.

These substances included TNT, according to Sieci.

Around-the-clock channel Sky News last year quoted a British air accident investigator as saying that he believes there were explosions on board the Polish president’s Tu-154M plane before its fatal crash in 2010.

Poland’s ruling conservatives have long challenged an official report into the causes of the disaster issued by the previous Civic Platform-led 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.

A new commission to probe the crash was set up by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which came to power in Poland in 2015. The party is headed by Jarosław Kaczyński, twin brother of the late President Lech Kaczyński.

The commission said in January last year that the jet’s left wing was destroyed as a result of an explosion on board.

The commission added that the explosion had “several sources” on the plane.

In April 2017, the Polish commission said that the presidential plane was probably destroyed by a mid-air explosion and that Russian air traffic controllers deliberately misled Polish pilots about their location as they neared the runway.

(pk/gs)

Source: polskieradio24.pl

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