WARSAW,
Sept 26 (Reuters) - Relatives of the victims of a plane crash that
killed Poland's president and 95 others in 2010 are facing the
possibility that they buried strangers instead of their loved ones due
to mistakes identifying remains.
Polish prosecutors said on
Tuesday that the remains of Anna Walentynowicz, one of the people killed
in the crash near the Russian city of Smolensk, were mixed up with
those of another victim.
That revelation has raised questions
about how many of the other bodies were wrongly identified after the
crash - an event which traumatised the nation and still complicates
relations with Poland's neighbour Russia.
Prosecutors have so far
ordered that the remains of four victims should be exhumed to check if
they are indeed the people their relatives thought they buried.
"I
don't want to say that there will be a wave of exhumations just yet,
but it won't end with just four," said Rafal Rogalski, a lawyer
representing the relatives of several victims, including former
President Lech Kaczynski.
"What has happened only underlines the
approach of the Russian authorities and how reliable their documentation
is. For now I can say that I am only certain (about the identity) of 10
or 11 bodies," he told Reuters.
Lawyers and relatives said on Wednesday they were considering requesting that many more bodies be unearthed.
The
crash has particular poignancy for Poles because it evokes memories of
the Katyn massacre, when Soviet secret police murdered an estimated
22,000 Poles in a forest during World War Two. The crash victims were
travelling to Smolensk to take part in ceremonies to mark Katyn's
fiftieth anniversary.
"ETERNAL INFAMY"
The remains
of the Smolensk victims were examined by Russian investigators in the
presence of Polish officials in Moscow before being flown back to Warsaw
in metal coffins. They were then handed over to relatives for burial.
Opposition
leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of the late president who died
in the crash with other civilian and military officials, accused the
government of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk of failing to make sure
Russian officials dealt properly with the remains.
"The people
responsible for what happened with the exhumation should leave Polish
politics and leave in eternal infamy," said Kaczynski, who has been
accused of seeking to score political points from the disaster.
The Justice Minister was scheduled to discuss the exhumations at a parliamentary session on Thursday.
"The
original sin was when Poland decided not to work with Russian
investigators hand-in-hand immediately after the crash," said Stefan
Hambura, an attorney for the family of Walentynowicz. A former
Solidarity activist, her case sparked the review of how the remains were
identified.
Russian investigators have blamed the crew of the
Polish government Tu-154 for the crash, while a Polish report pointed
the finger at Russian ground controllers for allowing the jet to land in
heavy fog at a small airport near Smolensk.
Hambura told Reuters
he had already asked military prosecutors to test the remains of Stefan
Malak, a Smolensk victim, at the request of his brother.
Magdalena
Merta, a widow of another victim, said she regretted not checking
whether it really was the body of her husband that had lain in the
coffin she kept in her home before the funeral.
"This was a chance to establish his identity," she told Polish television.
"I
regret that I did not stand up to my family in this matter, but they
feared that opening it would have been the last thing I did in my life."
http://www.reuters.com
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