A senior investigator in Poland said on Tuesday that officials should seek international help over Moscow’s refusal to allow the reconstruction of the wreckage of a Polish presidential plane that crashed near the western Russian city of Smolensk in 2010.

Antoni Macierewicz, a former defence minister and head of a panel of Polish investigators who are still probing the 2010 crash, told the country's public radio broadcaster that Poland could try to put pressure on Moscow through the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) after Russia had refused to allow the wreckage to be reconstructed.

Meanwhile, a group of Polish prosecutors were on Tuesday expected to continue work on examining the wreckage of the Polish presidential plane.

A spokeswoman for Russia’s Investigative Committee was last month quoted as saying that Polish investigators “will participate in re-examination of material evidence - parts and components of the Tupolev-154M plane kept in Smolensk” from September 3 to 7.

The Council of Europe’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights in June called on Russia to return the wreckage of the Polish presidential plane, which crashed near Smolensk on April 10, 2010, killing all 96 on board, among them President Lech Kaczyński, his wife Maria, and dozens of top officials.

The committee unanimously approved a resolution saying that “the continuing refusal of the Russian authorities to return the wreckage and other evidence constitutes an abuse of rights and has fuelled speculation on the Polish side that Russia has something to hide."

Polish conservative MP Arkadiusz Mularczyk said at the time that the resolution gave Poland “a strong mandate to demand the return of the wreckage, the plane’s black boxes and the rest of the evidence from Russia.”

Hints of foul play

A new Polish commission reinvestigating the 2010 crash said in April last year that the plane was probably destroyed by a mid-air explosion and that Russian air traffic controllers deliberately misled Polish pilots about their location as they neared the runway.

Russian President Vladimir Putin late last year denied Polish suggestions that the 2010 air crash was the result of a Russian conspiracy.

Russia has argued that it cannot return the wreckage to Poland because it is conducting its own ongoing investigation into the Smolensk disaster and that the wreckage represents evidence in that probe.

The new Polish commission, which is still probing the crash, was set up by Poland’s conservative governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, which came to power in 2015.

The party is headed by Jarosław Kaczyński, twin brother of Poland’s late President Lech Kaczyński.

PiS has long challenged an official report into the crash issued by the previous Polish government which cited a catalogue of errors on the Polish side, while also pointing to errors made by Russian staff at the control tower of Smolensk Military Airport.

A Russian report placed all the blame on the Poles.

(gs/pk)

Source: Polish Radio/IAR, PAP