The bodies of former Polish president Lech Kaczynski and his wife have been removed from their tomb in Krakow, the first of more than 80 exhumations planned on prominent Poles killed in a airplane crash in Russia in 2010.
The exhumations that began late on Monday are part of a new investigation into the crash ordered by Poland’s ruling party, Law and Justice, which is led by former Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the late president’s twin brother.
Post-mortems are to be carried out to determine the cause of the deaths and of the crash, identify all the remains and check for explosives, as some of Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s followers claim that a planned blast downed the aircraft, killing all 96 onboard.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski has cast doubt on earlier investigations — carried out by both Poland and Russia — which concluded that the crash was an accident caused primarily by pilot error on approach to landing in dense fog.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski has for years encouraged a conspiracy theory suggesting Russia carried out an assassination with the support, or at least the consent, of then-Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, who is now the president of the European Council.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski wants to take Tusk, to court and is seeking evidence against him.
“There will not be a free Poland, a truly free Poland, without the truth, without a proper honoring of those who died, without a closure of this case which has cast such a long shadow on our national and social life,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski said on Thursday.
The bodies of Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria Kaczynska, were removed from their alabaster tomb at the Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, the resting place of many of Poland’s kings and writers, PAP news agency reported.
The remains were to be taken to a forensics laboratory at Krakow’s Jagiellonian University for a series of tests, including computer tomography and DNA tests.
Scientists will also look for the presence of explosives to check the belief held by many Kaczynski supporters that the aircraft disintegrated in mid-air in an intentional explosion.
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