Cttee notifies prosecution of alleged Lech Kaczyński assassination
A government commission investigating the 2010 Smolensk air disaster which killed Poland's presidential couple has notified the prosecution about the possibility of the incident having been a planned assassination attempt on President Lech Kaczynski, the commission's head, Antoni Macierewicz, told PAP on Monday.
On April 10 2010 a presidential plane carrying Kaczyński, his wife and over 80 top state and military officials, crashed near a military airfield in Smolensk, western Russia, during a landing attempt in heavy fog. No one survived the crash.
The delegation was flying to nearby Katyn for commemorations of the 1940 Katyn Forest Massacre, in which Soviet security executed over 20,000 Polish officers, policemen and other uniformed servicemen.
A Russian-headed international commission investigating the incident put its causes down to pilot error, especially the crew's insistence to land the plane in Smolensk despite warnings by flight controllers that the airfield was unable to take in the machine owing to adverse weather.
The commission's findings were subsequently confirmed by a Polish commission called up under the previous Civic Platform (PO) government.
According to Poland's currently ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), the crash was masterminded by the Russians to eliminate Kaczyński. Macierewicz has said his commission has proof that explosives were involved in the Smolensk crash.
