Explosion caused Smoleńsk catastrophe – Parliamentary commission

According to a report released by the parliamentary commission set up to investigate the Smoleńsk plane crash, an on-board explosion has caused the distaster. “Much indicates that on April 10, 2010, an explosion took place on board of the government Tupolev plane,” commission expert Wacław Berczyński said, announcing latest findings. According to the commission, the explosion could have been caused by a thermobaric explosive device, which initiated a strong shockwave. Maciej Lasek, who helmed a previous commission, set up by the previous Civic Platform (PO) government said that such findings are absurd. “These are illusions presented by people who had never investigated air crashes before,” he said in an interview with TVN24. “This is propaganda aimed at strengthening the faith in hypothetical causes of this accident,” he added. Bereszyński claimed that a number of discoveries and tests led to this conclusion, including the fact that some victims bodies had significant burns, even though they were found away from flames on the crash site. Also some parts of the wreckage were found one meter deep in the ground which would suggest they were moving ten times faster than the plane's speed. However recordings from the plane shown no sounds of explosion, while pilots and people in the plane's cabin talked until the moment the plane hit the ground. The earlier commission, set up by the previous government, blamed mistakes by the Polish pilots and Russian air traffic controllers for the crash. A Russian report blamed the Poles. The new commission is spearheaded by the Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz, who, over the course of seven years, put forward a number of conspiracy theories regarding the catastrophe. They included, among others, that a fake fog was dispersed to confuse the pilots, that at least three people survived the initial impact and that then-PM Donald Tusk, colluded with Russia to cause the catastrophe. The crash killed Polish President Lech Kaczyński, and 95 other people, including many top Polish officials.