Warsaw: The family of late Polish President Lech Kaczynski who died with 95 others in an April 2010 air crash in western Russia Monday said that Moscow may have plotted to assassinate him.
"Today the hypothesis of an assassination plot against
the Polish president is more plausible than ever," Marcin
Dubieniecki, the husband and lawyer of the late Kaczynski`s
only child, daughter Marta, told Polish media today.
"There are many things indicating that (the Russians
would have wanted) to assassinate Lech Kaczynski," Dubieniecki
told Poland`s commercial TVN24 news channel.
Kaczynski was known for his deep suspicion of Poland`s
Soviet-era master Moscow and for holding a staunch policy line
against Russian moves in the region.
According to Dubieniecki, Moscow may have been
motivated by "the possible re-election of president Lech
Kaczynski, revenge for (his backing) Georgia and by Russian
interests in relations between Moscow and the European Union."
In its final report issued last Wednesday in Moscow,
Russian investigators blamed the catastrophe on the
incompetence of the plane`s Polish pilots and pressure from
senior officials on the flight to land despite dangerous
weather warnings.
Dubieniecki accused Russian investigators of ignoring
an attempt by Polish pilots to regain altitude and abort the
landing 22 seconds prior to the crash.
The attempt "failed because the crew was misinformed
about the plane`s altitude and about the position of the
landing course and path," Dubieniecki charged.
The Russian crash report stirred controversy in
Poland, with liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk saying Poland
would present its own version after he termed the Russian
findings "incomplete".
Meanwhile, Kaczynski`s surviving twin and conservative
opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Moscow`s report
"made a mockery of Poland."
The report clears local air traffic controllers and
the technical condition of the regional airport in Smolensk of
having been a factor in the crash.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Polish
counterpart Bronislaw Komorowski pledged on Friday to continue
dialogue.
PTI
