Brussels, 30th March 2012
On Wednesday in the European Parliament there was another public hearing on the Smolensk Crash, was organised by the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) with ECR Vice-Chairman Ryszard Legutko, ECR MEP Tomasz Poreba, and ECR MEP Ryszard Czarnecki. The hearing was attended by a significant number of distinguished guests, including members of the victims’ families, MEPs, scientists as well as representatives of embassies and the Polish community.
This was already the second public hearing on the Smolensk tragedy; the first one took place in December 2010. Yet again, the families have called for an international committee for investigation into the tragedy. The public hearing focused on the latest work of the Parliamentary Group looking at what really happened in Smolensk - revealing new facts, evidence and theories. It was an opportunity for the international public at large to find out how inadequate the investigation and evidence examination has been to-date
‘The number of improprieties in the investigation of the causes of the Smolensk Tragedy is, both in Poland and Russia, so extensive, that the need for international intervention is today far more obvious than it was in December 2010‘, said Marta Kaczyńska. The daughter of the late President enumerated the mistakes and manipulations of Jerzy Miller’s committee, prosecutors and Edmund Klich, Polish representative accredited at IAC.
Ewa Błasik, the widow of the late Gen. Andrzej Błasik, the Commander of the Polish Air Force, also referred to slanders and misinformation. ‘A merciless campaign of misinformation had started minutes after the crash. Russians destroyed the honour of the Polish soldiers and of the Polish Air Force with cruel premeditation. The Russian and Polish campaign was a modern example of Stalinist propaganda’, said Ewa Blasik. ‘In that time the Polish government remained silent and did not react to this smear campaign against my late husband. Furthermore, the Polish government allowed for this cruel campaign to be further spread and heated up. I was left to my own devices and I had to defend the honour of the Polish soldiers and pilots all alone. Despite the dramatic circumstances, I could not expect any help from my country’s authorities’, she added. Both speeches were heartily applauded. Mrs. Błasik obtained from the Polish community from Great Britain 96 white and red roses as a “small part of compensation” for the sufferings which she experienced because of the Polish authorities.
At the conference the experts who work with the Polish parliamentary team headed by MP Antoni Macierewicz presented new facts on the tragedy which strongly undermine the hitherto findings of the IAC and Jerzy Miller’s committee. PhD Kazimierz Nowaczyk, physicist at the University of Maryland, stated that there had been two explosions on the board between the moment of hitting the birch and hitting the ground. ‘According to the reports of IAC and Jerzy Miller’s committee there were two explosions. However, until now no one has dealt with this issue, apart from PhD Grzegorz Szufladziński (Analytical Service in Sydney). We can conduct further analyses on the basis of his research but the crucial ones can be conducted only after bringing the wreck to Poland’, said Nowaczyk.
The scientist also stated that the plane could not turn in the direction of the birch, which it presumably hit. ‘The analyses of IAC and other institutions present tilting of the plane to the left and this is contrary to the technical and aerodynamic properties of the plane’, explained Nowaczyk.
According to Prof. Binienda, it is not possible that such a large part of the wing came off after hitting the birch. ‘A small defect of the wing shall not influence the flight possibilities of the whole machine’, said Binienda.
‘The analyses show that the tragedy up in the air was a result of the action of third parties’, concluded Antoni Macierewicz.
Jarosław Kaczyński, who participated in the hearing via Internet connection, said that the tragedy “increasingly looks like an assassination attempt“. ‘If there were explosions, if this tragedy increasingly looks like an assassination attempt, then we are facing a new dimension in international politics’, stated Kaczyński.
The hearing was attended by a great number of participants, both from the EP and embassies. Prof. Ryszard Legutko, organiser of the hearing, underlined that such initiatives are needed in order to present new facts regarding circumstances and investigation of the tragedy in public because these information do not reach many people. The ECR members prepared a draft of the resolution regarding internationalisation of the investigation of the Smolensk tragedy.
Photo gallery: click here
For more information please visitwww.SmolenskCrash.eu where the recorded broadcast will be posted
Contact: ECR Press Officer Mateusz Kochanowski +32489582781
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