Polish MoD to Declassify 2010 Smolensk Plane Crash Archive Materials

Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz thinks that Poland’s’ commission on investigating the 2010 plane crash of the former president will not identify the culprit.

WARSAW (Sputnik) – Poland’s’ commission investigating the deadly 2010 plane crash near the Russian city of Smolensk that killed then-president and dozens high-level figures will not identify the culprit but only the cause of the catastrophe, Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said Thursday.

"Please do not expect that the commission will point to the culprits, because it is not the task of this committee, only an indication of what factors and events led to this tragedy," Macierewicz said at a briefing.

Moreover, Antoni Macierewicz has decided to declassify archive materials relating to the 2010 plane crash near the Russian city of Smolensk that killed then-president and dozens high-level figures.

"I decided to declassify and provide to the public materials concerning the Smolensk disaster," Macierewicz said at a briefing.

The minister noted that the documents he was referring to are needed to present the objective course of events and the previous investigative commission's decisions.The Polish Air Force Tu-154 jet airliner carrying Poland’s then-President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 88 military, parliament, banking and religious officials on April 10, 2010, crashed in heavy fog as it attempted to land at an airfield near Smolensk. All 96 people on board died in the crash.

The Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee said in a report that the flight crew’s decision not to reroute the plane to an alternative aerodrome led to the crash. In early February, the Polish Defense Ministry said that Warsaw would restart its investigation into the crash from the very beginning.