Smolensk air disaster investigator: it is likely that explosives were planted on President Kaczynski’s plane in Russia
Polish statesman Antoni Macierewicz, the chairperson of a special commission that was formed to investigate the deadly crash of the Tu-154M plane near Smolensk, Russia, in 2010 and took lives of Polish President Lech Kaczynski and members of the Polish governmental delegation, has stated that the explosives could not have been placed on the plane in Warsaw.
“We do not suspect that the explosive was planted during that time at the airport. There is no such suspicion. We’ve run forensic tests that concluded that in order to plant an explosive device, the entire wing must have been disassembled,” Macierewicz told Polskie Radio, while commenting on Gazeta Polska’s publication of materials about the manipulation of the left wing of the plane at an airport in Warsaw.
Instead, Macierewicz floated an idea that the plane was tampered with in Russia where it underwent a repair half a year before the Smolensk crash.
“The explosive must have been planted in Samara (Russian Federation) because this would require taking apart the entire wing, which is a quite complex and time-consuming procedure,” the ex-Minister of Defense stressed.
According to Macierewicz, in April, a preliminary technical report will come out on the circumstances and reasons that caused the plane’s crash near Smolensk.
The notorious crash that has become the subject of much controversy happened on April 10, 2010, not far from a military airfield in Smolensk, Russia. Lech Kaczynski’s presidential Tu-154M plane crashed under suspicious circumstances, killing all 96 people aboard, representatives of the political, military and cultural elite of Poland.
The Russian Interstate Aviation Committee that conducted an investigation blamed the crash on the crew, but in 2015, new Polish authorities decided to revisit the circumstances of the deadly incident. In 2016, the investigation into the plane’s crash was renewed.
In January 2017, the authorities of Poland stated that they had found evidence that pointed to an explosion that had taken place on the Kaczynski’s plane. The explosion scenario was also confirmed by American forensic experts. Russia rejected this hypothesis outright.
Foreign Minister of Poland Jacek Czaputowicz informed the Russian Ambassador that Poland insisted on the return of the debris of the presidential plane, and also that Poland wanted to build a memorial to the victims of the crash near Smolensk.