Macierewicz Committee asks the Prosecution: "What happened to the missing air traffic control (ATC) recordings of more than 5 minutes?"
wPolityce.pl, February 2, 2015
SCNDEK Feb. 15, 2015
TU-154M Black Box
”How has the prosecution lost more than 5 minutes of the Smolensk ATC recordings?” is one of the main questions posed in the analysis by the Independent Parliamentary Committee led by MP Antoni Macierewicz.
On the website, the Parliamentary Committee claims that the transcripts and documents published by the Chief Military Prosecution Office are lacking several minutes, which could be crucial and could provide critical information for the outcome of the Smolensk crash investigation.
The official statement on the website of the Independent Parliamentary Committee to investigate the Smolensk crash is as follow:
More than 5 minutes of Smolensk North Airport ATC recording has not been accounted for in the transcript (based “essentially on the so called third copy of the transcripts prepared on 11-14 and 17-20 December 2012 for the purpose of a criminal case number 201/355051-10 led by the Investigation Committee of the Russian Federation”) presented on pages 39-116 of the materials published recently by the Chief Military Prosecution Office. The record has previously been included in the Appendix 8 of the flight incident no 192/2010/11, the Tu-154 M (tail number 101) crash investigation report, signed on 26 July 2011 by the Committee for the Investigation of National Aviation Accidents members established by Decision No 130/MON on 15 April 2010.
As assessed by niezalezna.pl website, the crucial excerpts removed from the recording included comments by Russian Lieutenant Colonel Paweł Plusnin, as well as other statements, which could have impact on the transcripts and any subsequent conclusions drawn from them.
To be specific, the missing recordings in question are: i) a final excerpt of 3 minutes and 10 seconds, and ii) a 2 minute 20 second excerpt from the ATC tower.
The prosecution, so far, has not commented on the Parliamentary Committee concerns.
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.
Early morning on April 10, 2010, the Polish Governmental Airplane Tu-154M (“Polish Air Force One”) departed from Warsaw, Poland, to Smolensk, Russia, carrying on board the highest level delegation of the Republic of Poland for the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre. The official delegation consisted of the President of Poland, First Lady, all members of the Central Command of the Polish Armed Forces, parliamentary, government and Church officials, and representatives of the families of the Katyn victims. Upon entering the airspace of the Military Airdrome “Severny” in Smolensk, Russia, the Polish pilot made one reconnaissance approach to landing. At the decision altitude, he chose not to land and issued a command to “go around.” Seconds later, the Polish Air Force One crashed. The entire Polish delegation of the highest level perished less than a mile from the Severny Airdrome in Smolensk, Russia. All 96 people on board were killed; there were no survivors ("Smolensk Crash").
Within minutes of the crash, the international media announced that pilot error led to the crash of the Polish Air Force One. This irresponsible rush to conclusion stands in contradiction to a well-known rule that whenever the head of state dies in a plane crash the probability of sabotage is increased. This principle was proclaimed, inter alia, in the Russian response to the investigation of the 1986 crash that killed President Samora Machel of Mozambique. The history teaches that when the head of state dies in the airplane crash, invariably the sabotage is involved. The history also teaches that initial investigations of high profile plane crashes tend to be conducted under undue political pressure. Transparent and impartial in-depth investigations are possible only years later.
While some Russian intellectuals and people in Central and Eastern Europe are alarmed by the Russian imperialistic ambitions of building “a new world order,” the West is utterly confused. In order to properly understand and evaluate the threat that Russia poses today, an unhindered analysis of the Russian behavior over the past decade is necessary. Unfortunately, due to the omnipresent policy of reset that forced Western media to abandon in-depth reporting on Russian hostility towards its neighbors, critical developments that took place in the regions bordering Russia over the past decade have not been reported at all or only favorably to Russia.
Among such key events is the political situation in Poland since 2007, with its central event - the crash of the Polish Air Force One in Smolensk, Russia, in April of 2010 that claimed the lives of the President of Poland, the entire Central Command of the Polish Armed Forces, and the patriotic leadership of the Polish society. Any analysis of the political context of this crash as well as any discussion of the problems with the investigation into this tragedy have been systematically suppressed by the Western media in order not to upset Russia. Consequently, the lack of knowledge about Russian behavior in connection with the Smolensk tragedy impairs judgment of the American public on current Russian behavior in Ukraine and elsewhere.
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