Cttee to notify prosecution of alleged Lech Kaczynski assassination
Antoni Macierewicz, head of a government commission investigating the 2010 Smolensk air disaster which killed Poland's presidential couple, said on Sunday that the commission will notify the prosecution about the possibility of the incident having been a planned assassination attempt on President Lech Kaczynski.
On April 10 2010 a presidential plane carrying Kaczynski, 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 Kaczynski.Macierewicz, who heads a government commission investigating the disaster, told PAP that the commission will notify the prosecution about the possibility of the incident being a criminal act aimed to assassinate Kaczynski and the remaining persons on board.
Macierewicz said his commission had found proof of several explosions on board the plane shortly before it crashed, which confirms the assassination theory.
"We cannot tolerate a situation where we have proof that this was an assassination attempt, and no procedures at all are initiated. This is why the commission has prepared a motion for the prosecution to launch investigations not just into the crash itself, but also into the (possibility of - PAP) the assassination of the Polish president," Macierewicz said.
