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Recording points to failings by Polish ex-PM Tusk over 2010 presidential plane crash: report

19.03.2021 13:37
A recorded conversation of Polish former Prime Minister Donald Tusk points to failings by his government in how it handled the aftermath of a presidential plane crash in western Russia in 2010 that killed all aboard, according to public broadcaster TVP, which aired the recording.
The crashed Polish presidential plane near Smolensk, western Russia, in 2010.
The crashed Polish presidential plane near Smolensk, western Russia, in 2010. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Bartosz Staszewski, PRS Team.net. (CC BY-SA 2.5)

The Polish public broadcaster's tvp.info website said the recording indicates the government in Warsaw at the time did not seek a greater role in a Russian probe following the crash, thus giving the Russians an advantage, and that Polish investigators were sent to Russia without money and translators.

TVP, which aired the recording on Thursday, aims to send it to prosecutors, according to public broadcaster Polish Radio's IAR news agency.

An investigative report by TVP said the recording of a conversation 13 days after the Polish presidential plane crash between Tusk and Polish investigator Edmund Klich, who was accredited with the Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK), "was to be irretrievably destroyed" but had been uncovered by the public broadcaster's journalists.

The tvp.info website reported that Klich had difficulties in contacting Tusk after the crash.

It added that Klich had been deployed as an investigator with "virtually no support - no translator… and even without money."

The plane crash near the western Russian city of Smolensk on April 10, 2010, killed Polish President Lech Kaczyński and 95 others. It is still a source of controversy and recriminations.

The delegation on the presidential plane had been flying to mark the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre of Polish officers and intellectuals by the Soviets during World War II.

Poland’s ruling conservatives have long challenged an official report into the causes of the plane crash issued by Tusk's previous Civic Platform-led government, which cited a catalogue of errors on the Polish side, while also pointing to errors made by Russian staff at the control tower of Smolensk Military Airport.

A Russian report placed all the blame on the Poles.

A new commission to probe the crash was set up by the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which came to power in Poland in 2015. The party is headed by Jarosław Kaczyński, twin brother of the late president.

In April 2017, the commission said that the presidential plane was probably destroyed by a mid-air explosion and that Russian air traffic controllers deliberately misled Polish pilots about their location as they neared the runway.

(pk)

Source: tvp.info/IAR