Russia refuses to hand over to Poland documents for Smolensk investigation.
SCND April 23, 2015
Russia has refused to hand over to Poland documents regarding the air traffic control management at the Smolensk Airport,” informed the Polish Chief Military Prosecution Office. As explained by Major Marcin Maksjan, two documents have been requested by Poland in May 2010 and those requests have been re-issued a few times since then.
The documents in question are a “Smolensk North Airport Flight Management Manual” and “National Aviation of the Russian Federation’s Federal Regulations for Flight Management.” Russia informed that disclosing the full content of these documents is not possible, referring to one of the provisions from the European Convention of 1959 regarding legal cooperation in criminal cases.
“According to that provision, a refusal of legal cooperation is allowed if the requested party deems a fulfilment of the request would result in a violation of the sovereignty, security, public order or other essential interests of the party,” explains Major Maksjan.
Since the second document, “National Aviation of the Russian Federation’s federal regulations for flights management,” is a legal document, it is commonly accessible. Therefore, the Chief Military Prosecution Office was able to obtain this document by means other than an official request. However, Poland received only a summary of the first document (the manual), but not its complete content.
Remigiusz Mus, the flight engineer on Yak-40 whose landing immediately preceded PLF 101 and whose testimony implicated the Russian flight controllers, died of suicide.
This rounds out the death of the entirety of key witnesses whose testimonies could prove that the flight controllers bore at least partial responsibility for the mysterious crash that killed the Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others near Smolensk, Russia, on April 10, 2010.
Suicide. So says the Polish Prosecutors office under the administration of Donald Tusk, Bronislaw Komorowski, and the Civic Platform party (Platforma Obywatelska, PO) - the people who came out on top following the disaster of Flight PLF 101. The position of the Prosecutors office is that the autopsy indicated death by hanging with no defensive wounds and and alcohol level of one permille (.01%).
General Konstantin Anatolyevich Morev, chief of the Federal Security Services (FSB), successor to KGB, office in Tver, who interviewed the Russian flight controllers, died at the end of August 2011. His body was found in his office. The official cause of death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound from his service revolver. Read more here
"Russian Image Management"
The trip to Smolensk was expected to highlight Russia finally admitting culpability in the massacre, after long having blamed it on the Germans, an atrocity they had tried to conceal for over 70 years.
As for the reception committee, it had different ideas. Putin wasn’t looking forward to such an occasion. Into this poisonous reception brew was President Kaczynski’s well-known public criticism of Moscow and Putin, a habit that has ended the lives of others within Russia – and abroad. A few discouraging Russian requirements – that Kaczynski could not attend in any official capacity – did not halt the Poles. Kaczynski would go anyway on non-official, “personal” business. To Russians, such a distinction would be meaningless, not lessening the possible international excoriation of such an event. A problem ripe for a modern, Russian solution: a tragic, ‘natural’ accident.
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