Thick fog caused a deadly plane crash which took the life of the Polish President, as well as 18 MPs.
On April 10, 2010, a Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft operating Polish Air Force Flight 101 carrying Polish president Lech Kaczynski and 95 others crashed in the Smolensk military airfield in Western Russia, killing everyone on board, in what is described as Poland's worst national disaster since World War Two.
The list of victims included the country's commanders of its ground, sea, air and special forces, the head of its central bank and several other dignitaries.
The officials had been on their way from Warsaw to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, in which some 22,000 Polish intellectuals and prisoners of war were murdered on Soviet orders in 1940.
The pilots were attempting to land at Smolensk North Airport – a former military airbase – in thick fog, with visibility reduced to about 1,600ft (500m).
The aircraft descended far below the normal approach path until its left wing hit a tree and crashed into the ground, coming to rest in a wooded area a short distance from the runway.
To stay up to date with all the latest news, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters here.
Both the Polish and Russian official investigations found no technical faults with the aircraft, concluding that the crash was an accident caused by human error and thick fog over Smolensk.
The Law and Justice (PiS) party however – led by the late president’s twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski – did not accept the findings and claimed the crash was a political assassination.
In 2012, then-PiS spokesman Adam Hofman said: “The disaster needs to be clarified through politics, as it happened because of politics.
“We say clearly: we need to win elections to explain the case of Smolensk. And to win elections, we must conduct politics.”
According to an Ipsos survey conducted in February 2020 – nearly a decade after the tragic incident – 26% of Poles believe the crash was an assassination, while 59% believe it was an accident.
Over the years there have been several conspiracy theories regarding the cause of the crash.
Some claim it was an act of war against Poland or an elaborate coup attempt, possibly orchestrated by Russia.
The absurdity of some of these theories range from the claim that the fog around the airport had been artificially produced, to victims' bodies being doctored in fake autopsies, to the idea that explosive devices were planted on board the plane.
When PiS returned to power in 2015, it controversially dug up bodies of those who died in the crash – at times against the express wishes of families – in order to prove that the crash wasn't an accident.
Despite the conspiracy theories and attempts to uncover the 'truth', 12 years later it is widely accepted that the cause of the crash was in fact the fog along with human error.
Source: Read Full Article