Polish Minister of Defense: Smolensk air disaster was not a coincidence
Answering a question as to whether he believes that the April 10, 2010 crash of an aircraft near Smolensk (Russia) with Polish top government figures on board was a cold-blooded assassination, the Minister of National Defense of Poland, Antoni Macierewicz, said “the materials and investigation results bring us to a conclusion that this was not an accident,” and promised to release a final report in spring 2018.
Macierewicz also said he expected a flood of disinformation and false data prior to the release of the expert conclusion, targeting members of a commission that had been formed to investigate the Smolensk crash, trying to question the very principle of the investigation.
“I assure you: I will complete this task, the report will be released, and it will be a true and credible report based on strong evidence and not on some flimsy theories and speculations that a plane with a wingspan of roughly 40 meters somehow capsized 5 or 6 meters above the ground. What I am saying is that the report will be based on truth and not on rubbish,” Macierewicz stressed.
Addressing a question on how he evaluates the impact of the lack of access to the debris of the Presidential Tu-154M aircraft and flight data recorders on the final conclusions of the commission, Macierewicz said there were several days immediately after the tragedy that had been lost irreversibly “when this main evidence was possible to recover,” adding that Poland “possesses much credible data that allows us to reconstruct the events.”
On April 10, 2010, a Tu-154 aircraft of the Polish Air Force crashed near Russian city of Smolensk killing all 96 people on board, including President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski.