WARSAW, January 17 (RIA Novosti) – Polish experts found no traces of explosives in the wreckage of a plane that crashed in Russia in 2010, killing Poland’s president and nearly 100 others, Polish military prosecutors said Friday.
The analyzed samples were taken by Polish analysts from the crash site in autumn 2012 and summer 2013.
Forensics experts from the Central Forensics Laboratory reported that analysis of the samples, which were obtained from exhumed bodies, soil at the crash site and parts of the aircraft, did not reveal any traces of explosives or their decay substances, prosecutors said in a statement.
Prosecutors said, however, that the forensics report was not conclusive and asked the experts to provide explanatory notes on their findings by this spring.
The Russian-made Tu-154 jet carrying President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and a host of other top officials crashed in heavy fog as it attempted to land at an airfield near Smolensk on April 10, 2010. The delegation was flying to Smolensk to mark the 70th anniversary of the 1940 Katyn massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police. All 96 people aboard the plane died.
In the fall of 2012, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita claimed that traces of explosives had been discovered in the plane’s debris. Military prosecutors denied the claims, saying the final results of chemical tests would be made public in six months. The newspaper’s editor-in-chief resigned following the publication.
Russian and Polish investigators carried out a joint investigation from February to March last year in response to speculation that the late Polish president could have been the victim of a conspiracy to blow up his plane with a bomb.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in December that the investigation had been extended until April 2014 and the wreckage of the plane would be handed over to Poland upon its completion.
