Masses, marches and ceremonies were held across Poland on Sunday to mark the sixth anniversary of the Smolensk plane crash, which killed 96 people, including the country’s president and dozens of top officials.

Andrzej Duda (left) accompanied by Marta Kaczyńska (centre) on their way to the crypt at Wawel Cathedral, where the latter's parents, the late president Lech Kaczyński and his wife, are buried. Photo: PAP/Jacek Bednarczyk

The anniversary is the first since the conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in October. Sunday’s commemorations of the air disaster - which is still a source of bitter dispute in Poland - are particularly high profile.

PiS is headed by Jarosław Kaczyński, twin brother of former president Lech Kaczyński, who was killed when his plane crashed in Smolensk, western Russia on 10 April, 2010.

An official Polish delegation of almost 200 people travelled to Smolensk to pay tribute on Sunday to the crash victims.

In Poland, President Andrzej Duda laid flowers at the tomb of Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria in a crypt at the historic Wawel Cathedral in the southern city of Kraków.

"Time heals emotions, it changes them, but they are still present," Duda said.

Tribute to victims



Prime Minister Beata Szydło and PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński paid their respects at graves at Warsaw’s Powązki military cemetery and laid wreaths at a monument commemorating the crash victims.

The air disaster is still an open wound in Poland. Supporters of Law and Justice have accused the former Civic Platform-led government of negligence in planning the 10 April 2010 presidential flight to Smolensk, and of mishandling the aftermath of the crash.

Before unveiling a memorial plaque to Lech Kaczyński in front of the presidential palace in central Warsaw, Duda called for unity and forgiveness.

He also told the crowd that had gathered: “The Smolensk tragedy and what happened before and after it was a great and dramatic testimony to the shoddiness of our country. To bad management and errors. To all those things that should never have happened in Poland.”

Duda said the crash victims deserved "an honest and calm, solid inquiry into what happened then. But without a political scuffle. Without an unnecessary row.”

New probe

Polish Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz in February appointed a new team of investigators to look into the disaster.

The head of the team, Wacław Berczyński, has told the Gośc Niedzielny magazine that he had access to US satellite pictures of the site of the disaster taken just before and after the crash.

Berczyński said: "With great probability, almost definitely, it can be said that the plane broke up in the air. The photos show plane parts scattered at a considerable distance in front of the birch which had supposedly broken the wing of the Tupolev."

While still an opposition MP, Macierewicz had led the so-called Macierewicz Commission, a group of parliamentarians mainly from the then-opposition Law and Justice party which concluded in a 2014 report that the Polish president's Tupolev 154 plane was brought down by an explosion.

This was in stark contrast to earlier official Polish and Russian reports on the causes of the tragedy, which happened in dense fog on approach to a military airfield lacking ground identification radar.

The former report 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. The Russian report placed all the blame on the Poles. (pk)