ATTACHMENT. The Smolensk Tragedy. On the 10th of April 2010, Polish army airliner Tu-154 was involved in a fatal aircraft crash in the city of Smolensk, Russia which killed all crew and passengers aboard, all of which has been shrouded in suspicious and unexplained circumstances. No wonder, when the 96 victims involved in the crash included the Polish President and First Lady, the last Polish President in exile, Chief of the General Staff, Commanders -in-Chief, President of the Polish National Bank, President of Institute of National Remembrance, as well as a number of MP's and senators, prominent figures of the polish elite.

On the very same day, the Polish government decided to leave the investigation solely in Russian hands, without securing the rights to appeal to international organisations, to aviation organisations amongst them, as well as denying the right of an inspection or any efficient control over examination procedures. The Polish government refused to consider any help from NATO, and did not attempt to gather any support from other European Union countries. As a result, all evidence gathered has been left on Russian soil, including confidential army data and NATO’s armies security codes, “black boxes”, and other flight recording devices containing all flight parameters. None of which has ever been returned to Poland, as well as any debris of the wreckage.

The death certificates of the victims are cursory and some of them are missing. Existing ones do not contain much of the basic information. There is doubt if any post-mortem examinations were ever performed. No post mortem examinations were undertaken in Poland, as opening the coffins was strictly forbidden. There is not a trace of any medical evidence in so far.

Shortly after the funerals took place, Russia sent a number of coffins back to Poland with anonymous human remains inside, although officials claimed that thorough DNA examinations had been performed. And even these unidentified remains, released for burial, had been never inspected and there is no post-mortem examination data available.

Families received their relatives bodies in sealed coffins under the threat that they would be prosecuted under Russian Federal criminal law if the coffins were opened or tampered with. All legal evidence is kept in secrecy. Polish authorities have had admittance to some of the Russian reports but not to the evidence itself, allegedly accumulated in Russia. The only interrogation ever performed in the presence of Polish army prosecutors in Russia has been withdrawn from files and replaced with an updated version, contradicting the original. As a curiosity we treat Russian acceptance of some Polish inspections within months after the crash, but not criminologists’ inspection, but archaeological and geological survey, although the former examinations were strictly limited to narrowly outlined areas, and usage of any specialist equipment was strictly forbidden. Collected with nearly bare hands all findings were confiscated by Russian officials after the survey had been completed. It can be striking for the western reader and create a degree of suspicion that the translation of the original was somewhat lost, so it needs to be underlined: there were no Polish crash investigators, criminologists or explosives experts allowed to inspect the scene; the only accepted specialist surveys were those of archaeologists and geologists.

The scene of the crash investigation has not been secured. In the subsequent days and months (sic!) following the tragedy, victims' relatives and mourners of the dead gathered at the nearby Polish War Memorial for murdered Polish prisoners of war, still in deep shock and pain in the acknowledgement that human remains still remain in the field where the crash took place. The investigation in Russia is flawed, as no impartially can be assigned. MAK (Interstate Aviation Committee) is strictly bound with the producers of crashed Tu-154 and is thus held responsible for certifying both: the aircraft and the airfield and issued both permissions for entry to service. Therefore, any evidence of technical failure, either aircraft or airfield would be accusing the very same committee of neglect.

The Russian Prosecutor’s Office Chief is Mr Czajka, the very same man who refused the British government's attempt to investigate Litvinienko’s death in Russian Federation and kerbed their attempts to extradite the suspect of politically motivated murder.

Within days following the tragedy we witnessed in Russia as well as in Poland, an unprecedented media disinformation campaign to cover up and blur many of the facts, such as:

1. Immediate (within a couple of minutes after recognition of the crash) laying sole responsibility on the pilots and their alleged lack of training and poor communication skills. After the investigation these accusations turned out to be complete lies, as the commanding pilot was one of the most experienced, master class pilots of the regiment, with over a thousand flying hours completed on this aircraft type. He was well versed in the specifics of the Russian airports, ground personnel habits, all the procedures, and spoke fluent Russian.

2. Falsifying aircraft movements before the crash and reporting four abortive landing attempts, when we know that only one had been performed.

3. Reporting the break of the aircraft’s left wing whilst hitting a 40 cm diameter tree, which turned out to be completely false, what is officially confirmed.

4. Immediate refusal, within hours after crash, before any inspection had been completed, to consider any fatal mechanical or equipment failures as well as terrorists’ attack.

5. Reporting misleading information about the exact time of the crash. The official time given by Premier of Russian Federation Ministers is over a dozen minutes later than it was finally set.

The entire landing navigation performed by the Russian airfield ground personnel had been misleading the crew and falsely confirming their positions – what was finally admitted by the officials and is based on hard evidence (flight controllers actions recordings), while military procedures (both the crew and the ground personnel were military) give decisive power in properly performed landing to the later, i.e.: Russian flight controllers.

All independent enquiries and examinations show incoherency and an incompatibility of the Russian version of events. There was no fuel explosion and it crashed (or performed the procedures of an emergency landing) - due to Russian evidence, into a swampy forest ground weakening the pressure. What would cause it then? Death of ALL passengers and the total disperse of wreckage (annihilating 40% of its mass), unexplainable range and scale of the injuries, the carnage left by passengers to a level where most of the bodies were unrecognisable. In addition, the mysterious chain of events at the Russian airport in Smolensk between 8.20 and 9.14 Warsaw time, when the airport had no outside communication, no power supply, and no eye-witnesses present.

There are hundreds of examples of evidence being destroyed, or simply being overlooked and never considered for examination. Examples of pure lies and disinformation delivered through the main media by both: Colonel Putin and Polish Prime Minister Tusk;. Amongst them the most obvious lies, which Russian-Polish media have already acknowledged. Facing such a situation Polish citizens commenced their own enquiry using the power of the internet. There are pilots, flight controllers, physicians, mathematicians, engineers, people of science. Their efforts proved without doubt that the Russians, so called “final cockpit recordings transcript” had been manipulated, and that the protocol delivered by the Russian Aircraft Accidents Investigation Committee does not consist any technical data, no official documents of inspection are attached, it simply does not describe the reality and there are no questions answered. Some of its crucial statements are blunt lies. These findings were finally confirmed by Polish officials investigating the tragedy.

The preliminary stages of this investigation revealed that the aircraft Tu-154 was deliberately driven to the outside of the landing path. There is a hypothesis that the “meaconing” -the interception and rebroadcast of navigation signals, might have been used. Russian flight controllers insisted until the very last seconds and reassured the crew that they were “on the course and on the approach lane”. Despite the fact, the aircraft had not been on the course and on the approach lane throughout the whole procedure of landing at all!

All public protests and demands for a thorough investigation of the “catastrophe”, together with a full explanation of what had happened to the aircraft during the last seconds; from the time just after it crashed or emergency landed, until restoring the communication, power supply and informing the public about the accident and President’s death, are being refused and prevented from being answered. All original recordings related to this accident disappeared in Russia. There is neither any photographical evidence being presented, nor video or audio, which could help us to acknowledge how the flight with President on board had progressed before its fatal end. There is no any electronic trace, no eye-witness testimony of the accident circumstances. No one saw anything, no one heard anything, no one filmed anything, no one recorded anything with his mobile phone.

In this situation only the world’s public opinion can force Polish government and the government of Colonel Putin to disclose the documents and the evidence. Only military services of NATO, of which Poland is a member, can possess or have access to the satellite pictures of the accident scene, and help us to establish the truth. And the truth is what the victims deserve, and we are obliged to deliver.