The 10th of April 2010 will always be remembered as the most tragic event of the Polish recent history. Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, as well as 94 other persons (including senior military and political figures, the officers of the Government Protection Bureau and the plane crew who were travelling for the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre) were killed in a plane crash near Smolensk. After those tragic events we decided to found the organization dedicated to gathering information about the Smolensk tragedy and keeping the public informed about the latest findings of investigation conducted by objective experts and journalists.
The Initiative „Smolensk – we want the truth” is an independent, non-governmental and informal group of young and well-educated people concerned about the well-being of their motherland. We do not belong to or support any political party but we take action to show our categorical remonstrance against the authorities’ and majority of the Polish and Russian media acting to the detriment of Poland in this matter. We hoped that the Smolensk catastrophe would prove to be just an accident. However, it seems that the facts show quite the opposite.
All the facts listed below are easily accessible to everybody but, unfortunately, they are still not commonly known. Read the text below and answer the following questions: how many of these facts are unknown to you? Why Polish authorities and the media do not want you to be aware of them?
Many people have been wondering why president Lech Kaczynski insisted on going to Katyn, despite the fact that Putin and Tusk had officially set the date of their visit beforehand. In fact, the converse is true. The correspondence between the Chancellery of the President and the Chancellery of the Prime Minister as well as the letters between Polish and Russian authorities apparently show that the official ceremony was planned to take place on 10th of April and the idea of separate ceremonies prepared along with Russia was carried out later on. This was undoubtedly a kind of attack aimed at the Polish President whose visit was disdainfully called ‘a pilgrimage’ in the letters sent by the Russian embassy. These diplomatic efforts resulted in depriving Lech Kaczynski’s visit of appropriate dignity. Furthermore, there was no security service to meet the president at the airport at all. This was against the Polish law.
2) Groundless and false accusations
Why did Russian civil servants and officers lie and spread disinformation? They lied about pilots’ poor knowledge of Russian language and about the four attempts of landing. They also announced that the crew of the Tu-154 did not take a decision to switch to a back-up airfield and that the pilots took “unjustified risk” on their own disregarding air traffic control’s order to land in Minsk. None of the above circumstances took place. Why did the Polish and Russian commission announce that general Blasik was at fault for the crash and accused him of exerting pressure over the crew? How to justify these lies? Miller’s commission (The Committee for Investigation of National Aviation Accidents) claimed to recognize second pilot’s voice from the cockpit recording as general Blasik’s one while the Cracow Institute of Judicial Expertise which was officially asked to examine voices from the flight recorder confirmed it was not the general’s voice. This proved one more time that the government did not reveal the truth about the plane crash in Smolensk.
3) Secret agreement
Why was the hypothesis of an assassination rejected during the secret meeting of Polish and Russian prosecutors only several hours after the crash? Why are we being misled that this hypothesis was seriously considered? Why did Polish prosecutors agree to deliver the flight recorders to Russian investigators although this was unreasonable and unnecessary? Why has the information about the above-mentioned meeting been kept secret for 6 months?
4) Catastrophe investigation handed over to Russians. Polish investigators deprived of the possibility to examine the plane crash.
Why was the flight of TU – 154 M (M stands for Military) wrongfully recognized as a civil flight and why was the plane crash being investigated basing on the Chicago Convention applying only to civil airplanes? Why was the more appropriate 1993 Polish-Russian agreement not applied in this case which would be much more favorable for Poland? Why was the general public not informed about such a possibility? Why did the Polish government not turn for help to NATO, UE or international air committees? Why did Russian side repeatedly disobey the Chicago Convention denying Polish investigators access to the key materials and preventing them from conducting the investigation? Why are the original flight recorders still in Russia? Why the President’s satellite phone and Government Protection Bureau officers’ guns have not been delivered to the Polish side yet? How to explain the fact that somebody used these phones and logged into the network several hours after the catastrophe? Who and why fiddled around with the phones’ software? And finally, why were the videos and evidence collected by Polish journalists in Smolensk taken away from them?
5) Misleading instructions given from Russian air traffic control
‘You are on course and you keep the track‘, Polish pilots received this message three times from the Russian air traffic control while coming to land although the airplane had been already well below the track for some time. Why did they receive false instructions? Why are Russian controllers’ testimonies contradictory to the stenographic records and why was the evidence modified later on or simply cancelled? Although several months have passed since the plane crashed it is still not known why not all the persons who were on duty in the Smolensk control tower at the time of the catastrophe have been questioned.
6. Destroying the evidence
Why did Russians cut down the trees near Smolensk airport and ploughed the area where the plane crashed? Why did Russians start to destroy the plane’s wreck several days after the crash and why has all this been approved and accepted by the Polish government for more than several months? Why is the significant part of the plain missing, including the allegedly well preserved cockpit? Why was the wreck of the plane being WASHED and why not delivered to Poland although legally recognized as Polish property? Why did the Polish government not agree to perform autopsies on the victims saying that Russians had forbidden anybody to open the coffins? After almost two years the autopsies have been finally performed and the results revealed to the public. How to explain the fact that Russians desecrated the bodies of the crash victims? Moreover, it turned out that the results of the autopsies performed by the Polish side do not coincide in 90 percent with the results provided by the Russians. Why did Russians put naked bodies of the victims in plastic bags in the coffins? To make them decompose more quickly? Why was the worldwide renown professor Baden not allowed by Polish authorities to conduct the autopsies?
7 ) Simulating the investigation
Why is the black box recording (the one which has been in possession of Polish investigators from the very beginning) still kept secret? Why did Polish investigators hide the fact that they had American satellite pictures of the place where the crash happened? Why the video made just a few seconds after the catastrophe has not been analyzed yet? Why, despite the fact that the Internal Security Agency confirmed the authenticity of the video, we still do not know whose voices (screaming something in Polish) have been recorded on it and what do the sounds resembling gun shots in the background mean? Why did Ewa Kopacz, the Polish Minister of Health, confirm that every piece of ground where the catastrophe happened was examined and investigated with the utmost precision while it turned out that parts of the victims bodies as well as parts of the plane were easy to find even several months after the crash? Why did she claim that Polish doctors and pathologists were present during the autopsies although this was not true?
8) Disregard for experts’ research and witnesses’ testimonies
Three foreign aviation experts have conducted independent research on the catastrophe (without prior consultation) and it turned out that they obtained similar results. According to them it was impossible for the plane to get damaged after hitting a birch. Their calculations and flight simulation revealed that the plane had flown over the birch and its fall had been caused by two explosions. One of the experts involved was Professor Wiesław Binienda, the dean and lecturer of University of Akron, editor- in- chief of ‘Journal of Aerospace Engineering’, he has been also awarded by NASA several times. His lectures on Smolensk catastrophe won approval of Polish people and evoked their interest, which resulted in the increasing number of Polish scientists demanding to organize a scientific conference devoted to the Smolensk catastrophe. The second expert was Dr. Szuladziński. According to his research the way the plane broke as well as the way the bodies and the wreck were scattered all over the ground show that an explosion must have taken place on board.
Why are the above-mentioned results not taken into account during the official investigation and why is the testimony given by many Russian witnesses, claiming that they had seen an explosion before the plane crashed, being ignored?
9) Lies in the mass media
Why do the majority of Polish mass media keep repeating both Polish and Russian lies about the Smolensk catastrophe and why do they constantly spread disinformation? Why did the media publish sentences from black boxes which were not officially confirmed and which have not been written in official protocols? (“Should I not land right now, he is going to kill me”). How come that the lies and deceptions which have been exposed by experts are repeated so willingly in Poland and all over the world? Why a program which has published the recording showing Russian officers destroying the wreck, has been removed from the public TV?
Maybe someday we will know the answers to these questions.
