Russian investigators look into fatal Polish president plane crash

Russian investigators are studying the records of talks between the pilots of the crashed Polish president’s plane and ground air controllers, a spokesman for the Investigative Committee said on Sunday.

The Soviet-made TU-154 carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski hit the top of trees as it attempted to land at a Smolensk airport in west Russia on Saturday morning, killing all the 97 people on board the plane.

Vladimir Markin said both investigators and aviation specialists were studying and deciphering the flight recorders found at the site of the plane’s crash and were also inspecting fragments of the plane wreck.

The plane was taking Kaczynski and a delegation of top Polish officials to a ceremony to pay tribute to some 20,000 Polish officers who were executed in Katyn and other locations by Soviet secret police in 1940.

Markov also said that the bodies and body fragments of the air crash victims had been delivered to Moscow for identification.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of the late Polish president, earlier on Sunday identified the bodies of Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria.

Source: RIA Novosti