You're reading: Polish criticisms of witnesses to Kaczynski body identification disproved

The Russian Investigations Committee has denied Polish reports on contradictions in the information on witnesses to investigative actions who were present at the identification of the body of Poland's late President Lech Kaczynski, who was killed in a plane crash near Smolensk.

"The investigators have fully disproved the Polish media reports on contradictions in the information on witnesses to investigative actions stated in the protocol of evaluation of Kaczynski’s body," the Investigations Committee said in a report obtained by Interfax on Friday.

The report states that the investigators have made several inquiries about the witnesses’ actual place of registration and residence and questioned them.

"As a result of these actions, the investigators have received confirmation of the information provided earlier and the very fact of these people’s presence during the examination [of Kaczynski’s body]," the document says.

The Polish media reports criticizing the quality of the DNA tests performed on the bodies in Moscow have been "fully disproved by the criminal case materials investigated by the Investigations Committee and a thorough probe into the conclusions drawn by the Russian experts," the document says.

"No official information disproving the results of the Russian DNA tests has been provided by the Polish investigators to the Russian Investigations Committee or the public," it says.

The Investigations Committee reiterated that "the Russian authorities cannot be held responsible for the results of visual identification by the relatives or acquaintances who are citizens of Poland, on the basis of which the bodies were supplied to the Polish authorities." The Investigations Committee said that a group of experts and Polish military prosecutors, who worked in Moscow in the period between May 30, 2011, and June 17, 2011, "examined the original flight recorders from the Polish TU-154M, which crashed near Smolensk on April 10, 2010, together with Russian experts."

"Both Polish and Russian experts found no indications of breakage of assembly in the objects studied," the document says.

In January 2011, the International Aviation Committee released the final report on the outcome of the technical investigation into the crash. The report stated that the direct cause of the crash was the crew’s decision not to head to a reserve aerodrome and the systemic causes were flaws in flight support and crew training. The results of this investigation were provided to the Russian investigative bodies, which continue the investigation into the crash in cooperation with the Polish law enforcement agencies.