Poland President Dies In Airplane Crash

[Cowke]

Lech Kaczynski’s body being taken from the airport to the presidential palace as hundreds of thousands of Poles lined streets

 

Kate Connolly in Warsaw and Luke Harding in Moscow guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 April 2010 23.10 BST

 

Poland mourns president as plane crash investigation begins

 

Technical error ruled out – president 'may have pressured pilot into making unsafe landing'

 

Lech Kaczynski’s body being taken from the airport to the presidential palace as hundreds of thousands of Poles lined streets. Photograph: Radek Pietruszka/EPA

 

Hundreds of thousands of Poles lined the streets of Warsaw as the body of President Lech Kaczynski returned home from Russia, where he and scores of Poland's political and military elite were killed in a plane crash.

 

Stunned by the country's worst tragedy since the second world war, onlookers waved the national flag and threw flowers on to the hearse as it slowly travelled the six miles from the military airport to Warsaw's presidential palace.

 

Kaczynski's coffin, draped in the Polish flag, was met at the airport by his daughter Marta, who also lost her mother, Maria, in the crash. She was with the president's twin brother, Jaroslaw, the country's acting president, Bronislaw Komorowski, and the prime minister, Donald Tusk.

 

As the late president lay in state at the palace, Russian air accident investigators gave their initial findings of the cause of the crash, which claimed 96 lives, including the head of the national bank, the leaders of all four branches of the military, the head of the Olympic committee, several champions of the country's struggle against communist dictatorship, historians and civil servants.

 

The investigators said there was no evidence of technical failure on the 26-year-old Tupolev 154 and blamed pilot error.

 

Deciphered recordings of conversations between the pilot and air traffic control on the ground in Smolensk did not indicate any problems in the crucial few seconds before the crash, Alexander Bastrykin, the head of the Russian's prosecutor's office, said.

 

"We have deciphered the tape reel and conducted a preliminary analysis. We will look in more detail in Moscow, but I repeat: the recording that we have confirms that there were no technical problems with the plane," he said. "The pilot was informed about the difficult weather conditions, and yet he decided to make the landing."

 

But speculation was rife that the president's own entourage might have insisted the pilot continue the flight, despite orders from Russian air traffic control for the plane to land in Minsk or Moscow due to the bad weather conditions in Smolensk.

 

The high-profile delegation was on a tight schedule on Saturday to attend a memorial service for the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre. Kaczynski was known for his assertiveness towards pilots who had flown him on official business in the past.

 

In a widely reported case in 2008, he flew to Tbilisi in his presidential plane during the war in Georgia. When his pilot refused to land in the Georgian capital, insisting it was too dangerous to do so, Kaczynski reportedly entered the cockpit and tried to change his mind. The pilot refused, and the party landed in the Azerbaijani capital of Baku, and was forced to travel the remaining stretch to Georgia by car over arduous mountain roads. Attempts were subsequently made to sue the pilot for failing to obey orders, but the case was thrown out by prosecutors.

 

The former Polish president Lech Walesa said it was too early to cast blame, but also suggested the pilot may have come under pressure from the Polish president and his delegation to land, despite the severe fog blanketing the approach to the airport.

 

Russian officials said 24 bodies from the crash had been identified. These were passengers whose bodies were not badly mutilated in the accident or had their passports with them, they said. All bodies had now been brought to Moscow. Forensic and criminal experts were trying to identify the others.

 

Relatives of the victims arrived in Moscow tonight to help with the process of identification. Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who is heading a government commission to investigate the crash, told Polish TV: "This is a horrible tragedy – 96 people have died. This is first of all the tragedy of Poland and the Polish people. But this is our tragedy as well. We are grieving together with you. Our hearts go out to you."

[Xaaji Xunjuf]

My Condolences on behalf of the Somaliland community on Sol.

[Thankful]

Xaji Xunjuf,

 

Must you use every oppurtunity to mention NW Somalia?

[AfricaOwn]

Originally posted by Thankful:

Xaji Xunjuf,

 

Must you use every oppurtunity to mention NW Somalia?

Why does it bother you? Forget about SL for a minute.

[Thankful]

I never forget about SL, everywhere in East Africa which we are the majority is SL in my eye's.

[AfricaOwn]

^^And you wonder why these "secessionist" air out your misfortune every chance they get. Pay them no mind, and see if they really care.

[Thankful]

Misfortune?? I would take what we have any day over your leader. A former regime employee who refuses to hold elections after he himself was elected. Whenever elections loom, he has his people rally on the street with the blue flag as a warning!