Polish newspaper report on 2010 crash causes furor

Updated 11:43 pm, Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Russians inspect the wreckage of the Polish government plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and other senior officials in 2010 in western Russia. 

Russians inspect the wreckage of the Polish government plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and other senior officials in 2010 in western Russia. 

Photo: NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA, AFP/Getty Images

Polish newspaper report on 2010 crash causes furor

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A report in a Polish newspaper Tuesday said that traces of explosives were found in the wreckage of the airplane that crashed in western Russia in 2010, killing President Lech Kaczynski and much of the country's senior leadership, reviving suspicions among some in Poland that the crash was not an accident. 

A spokesman for Poland's military prosecutor dismissed the report as “sensationalist,” saying at a news conference Tuesday that the highly sensitive equipment that experts used to examine the wreckage frequently yielded false positive results. 

“It is not true that investigators found traces” of explosives, said the spokesman, Col.  Ireneusz Szelag, who added that it may be as long as six months before conclusive test findings are available.  Later in the day, the newspaper, Rzeczpospolita, partly retracted its report online, saying the findings were not as definitive as it had initially said. 

Even so, the report seemed likely to increase distrust of the official inquiry into the crash, which concluded it was an accident.  By Tuesday afternoon, public response to the article was so strong that Prime Minister Donald Tusk appeared on television to condemn those who were repeating conspiracy theories. 

“It is unacceptable to formulate these drastic accusations, which are degrading to Polish public discourse,” he said. 

The newspaper initially reported that government experts had found traces of explosives, including TNT and nitroglycerin.  The newspaper noted that such traces could have come from the ground where the plane crashed, a wooded area near Smolensk that was the scene of intense combat during World War II and might still contain unexploded bombs and shells. 

In the later correction, Rzeczpospolita said that while the chemicals that were detected might be TNT and nitroglycerin, they were not necessarily so.  The paper defended its report, saying that “in the context of the multiplying conspiracy theories, the delay and hoarding of such important information is incomprehensible.” 

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the president's twin brother and the chairman of Law and Justice, which is now the largest opposition party, called Tuesday for the government to resign.  He then reacted furiously after military prosecutors dismissed the newspaper report. 

“It looks like a big hoax,” he said. 

The plane was approaching the Smolensk airport preparing to land in a thick fog, but missed the runway by about half a mile.  It snagged one wing on treetops and broke up, scattering chunks of fuselage across the forest.