Poland initiates international search and arrest for over 40 Russian forensic experts
Photo: In the Smolensk disaster case, Poland plans to arrest Russian forensic experts (Wikipedia by Serge Serebro)
The Polish prosecutor's office will file a request for the international search and detention of Russian forensic experts who conducted autopsies on the victims of the Smolensk disaster. They may have provided false testimony, according to Polskie Radio.
The Polish side is initiating such measures against 41 Russian forensic experts.
According to Krzysztof Schwarz, head of the investigative group at the Polish State Prosecutor's Office, prosecutors believe they provided false testimony in the case of the plane crash near Smolensk in 2010.
"The false entries in the Russian conclusions related to various circumstances, including the failure to describe the identification features of individual victims, the omission of serious bodily injuries, descriptions of organs and injuries that did not exist, as well as descriptions of autopsy procedures that were essentially not conducted," he said.
Schwarz added that serious violations were discovered during the autopsy of the bodies of the 60 victims, and Polish prosecutors consider this a crime.
Additionally, the Polish side has no information on the progress of the investigation on the Russian side.
"For more than a year, we have not received any information, so we do not know what is happening with the Russian investigation, at what stage it is, whether it has concluded, or whether any decision has been made," said Schwarz.
He also pointed out that "from what we know, the victims have also not received such decisions, so we suspect that the investigation has been suspended."
Poland claims that prosecutors repeatedly asked the Russian side to question the experts but received refusals. Furthermore, Russia also rejected the charges against the forensic experts. As a result, Poland has resorted to searching for these individuals.
If the court considers this request, the specified Russian citizens can be detained in Poland or elsewhere in Europe, and investigative actions can be carried out with them.
Smolensk disaster
On April 10, 2010, in the Smolensk region of Russia, near Pechery, a Polish presidential plane, the Tu-154, crashed while attempting to land at the Smolensk North airport in heavy fog. There were 96 people on board, 88 of whom were part of the official delegation. All passengers died, including President Lech Kaczyński and his wife, high-ranking government officials, law enforcement representatives, military commanders, and well-known public figures from Poland.
The investigation into the tragedy has not been completed. It was conducted by the Russian Interstate Aviation Committee, which claimed that the crash occurred due to the error of the Polish crew. Poland disagreed with this version.
Immediately after the tragedy, there was a theory that the cause might have been a terrorist attack carried out by Russian intelligence services.
In 2020, the Polish commission concluded that Kaczyński's plane was internally sabotaged.
In May 2022, a Polish court issued an arrest warrant for a Russian air traffic controller in connection with the Smolensk disaster case.
