The National Public Prosecutor’s Office said the decision, issued on March 4, closed two strands of an inquiry that has been one of several prosecutorial proceedings connected to the crash.
The case was launched after the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in 2015 and after the military prosecution service was abolished, with the Smolensk-related files transferred to a special team at the National Public Prosecutor’s Office.
One discontinued thread concerned claims that on April 10, 2010, then-Prime Minister Donald Tusk or then-acting head of state Bronisław Komorowski made, and then abandoned, an oral agreement with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on a joint Polish-Russian criminal investigation into the crash.
Prosecutors said this week they questioned dozens of witnesses and reviewed extensive documentation, but found no evidence that any such agreement had ever been made.
They also said the allegation rested on a misunderstanding of how the Polish state responded to the disaster.
Prosecutors drew a distinction between the criminal investigation, which was handled by prosecutors under criminal procedure rules, and the separate inquiry into the causes of the crash, which was conducted by an aviation accident investigation commission under aviation law and international rules.
Those were two different procedures, carried out by different bodies, under different legal frameworks, and for different purposes, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
According to the prosecutors, the prime minister and president had no authority to decide how a criminal investigation should be conducted, transfer it, or request the creation of a joint international investigative team.
They pointed out that in 2010 the prosecution service was formally independent of the government, and the offices of justice minister and prosecutor-general were separate.
The second discontinued thread concerned the failure of Poland’s prosecutor-general in 2010 to ask Russia to set up a joint investigative team.
Prosecutors said that only the prosecutor-general had the power to make such a request, and that the decision not to do so did not meet the legal definition of any crime, including specifically “diplomatic treason” or obstruction of justice.
They said the assessment at the time was that such a move would probably have been ineffective because Russia was not a party to the international legal instruments that provided for the creation of joint investigative teams.
They added that Polish prosecutors handling the Smolensk case at the time did not indicate that such a step was necessary.
The office said that between 2010 and 2015 Russia carried out most Polish requests for legal assistance, and that it is impossible to determine whether a joint team would in fact have improved cooperation.
The decision to partially discontinue the investigation is final.
At the same time, the main thread of the “diplomatic treason” case remains open. That part concerns whether Polish public officials harmed the state between April 2010 and January 2011 by agreeing with Russia on an unfavorable legal framework for examining the causes of the crash.
Prosecutors stressed that this still-active thread concerns the legal basis for the official accident inquiry by aviation bodies, not the basis for the criminal investigation conducted by prosecutors.
Two other related issues are still being examined within the broader proceedings. One concerns the legality of appointing the State Aviation Accident Investigation Commission after the crash. The other concerns the circumstances surrounding a memorandum signed on May 31, 2010 regarding the return of the aircraft’s flight recorders.
The National Public Prosecutor’s Office also said Prosecutor-General Waldemar Żurek decided on March 16 that, starting April 1, the main thread of the “diplomatic treason” inquiry will be transferred from Investigative Team No. 1 to Investigative Team No. 4.
The office said the move was prompted in part by staffing changes, including the removal of the prosecutor who had been leading the case.
In its statement, the office said the prosecutor-general had reviewed the current state of the investigation and questioned why it had lasted so long.
It said that despite years of proceedings over decisions taken in April 2010, prosecutors had still not gathered evidence sufficient to determine whether a crime had been committed and, if so, by whom.
The separate investigation into the causes and circumstances of the Smolensk disaster itself will remain with Investigative Team No. 1.
On April 10, 2010, a Polish Tu-154M government aircraft crashed near Smolensk in western Russia, killing all 96 people on board, including President Lech Kaczyński and his wife.
The disaster remains one of the most politically sensitive events in modern Polish history, and its legal and political aftermath has continued to divide opinion for years.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP