Poland accuses Russian air traffic controllers over Smolensk

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-smolensk-kaczynski-idUSKBN175152?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FworldNews+%28Reuters+World+News%29

>Polish prosecutors said on Monday they would press charges against two Russian air traffic controllers of deliberately contributing to a 2010 plane crash that killed Poland's president and 95 other people.

>The crash near Smolensk in western Russia killed the Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, as well as the central bank chief, top army commanders and several lawmakers.

>An inquiry by the previous government returned a verdict of pilot error, but the ruling right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party led by Kaczynski's twin brother Jaroslaw, has said the crash may have been caused by an explosion on board.

>"An analysis of the evidence ... has allowed prosecutors to formulate new charges against air traffic controllers, citizens of the Russian Federation," Polish Deputy Prosecutor General Marek Pasionek told a news conference.

>Russia has so far refused to return the wreckage of the jet to Poland, a member of NATO and the European Union, citing its own continuing investigation.

>The Polish prosecutors said on Monday that a re-opening of the victims' coffins, which had been sealed in Russia, has revealed that in two cases remains were in the wrong coffins and in five coffins there were fragments of other bodies.

>A transcript of conversations from the plane's cockpit leaked by Polish media in 2015 showed that members of the president's entourage urged the pilots to land despite heavy fog.

>But many Poles were shocked with video footage showing Russian workers pushing around large parts of the wreckage with excavators, cutting cables and carelessly throwing smaller pieces into a heap on a truck.