Poland claims the body of a Smolensk air crash victim had likely been replaced with another person’s remains
The Polish General Prosecution Office confirmed that there is a high probability that the body of one of the Smolensk air crash victims has been swapped with another person’s remains, RMF reports.
According to the radio station, during the exhumation of the body of Piotr Nurowski, the remains turned out to belong to an unknown person. At the same time, it was reported that these findings are preliminary and were made on grounds of visual inspection and analysis of medical records. There has been no DNA analysis that can establish the identity of the deceased. On November 15th this year, in Krakow, an exhumation of the bodies of the former President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria took place. Overall, Polish authorities decided to exhume the remains of 83 victims of the plane crash near Smolensk so as to verify their identities even though several families of those who died in the presidential plane crash opposed it.
On April 10, 2010, while landing in heavy fog and conditions of limited visibility on the North Airport near Smolensk, a Tu-154 plane crashed with 96 people on board. Among them, were former President Lech Kaczyński, his wife, and representatives of the High Command. They were flying to pay tribute as it was the anniversary of the massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn forest.
In 2011, the Interstate Aviation Committee issued a final report on the crash according to which the cause of the crash was the crew’s decision not to fly to an alternate airfield. At the beginning of February 2016, Poland renewed the investigation into the crash which the Minister, Antoni Macierewicz, called a terrorist attack.