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Key witness in crash of Polish airliner at Smolensk found dead

Flight engineer said a flight operations officer on duty had allowed the presidential plane to descend to the “landing decision point height” of 50 meters despite a dense fog
Photo ITAR-TASS
Photo ITAR-TASS

WARSAW, October 29 (Itar-Tass) — One of the key witnesses in the investigation of the crash of the Polish presidential airliner Tu-154 outside Smolensk has died in mysterious circumstances in Poland, a spokesman for the Warsaw district prosecutor’s office reported on Monday.

According to Dariusz Slepokura, Remigiusz Mus, a flight engineer from a Polish Yak-40 airliner which landed in Smolensk on April 10, 2010 an hour before the crash, was found hanged late on Sunday in the suburbs of the Polish capital.

The spokesman said “the body of Remigiusz Mus was found in the basement of the residential house where he had lived with his family”.

In his testimonials, the flight engineer said a flight operations officer on duty had allowed the presidential plane to descend to the “landing decision point height” of 50 meters despite a dense fog. This contradicted the official version, according to which the traffic controller did not allow the airliner to descend lower than 100 meters.

According to Mus, before that the Yak-40 airliner had also received permission to decend to the altitude of 50 meters. The head of the Polish parliamentary commission looking into the crash, Antoni Macierewicz, believes Mus was one of the two key witnesses in the case. The pilot of Yak-40, Artur Wosztyl, was the second one. The head of the commission believes he must now be taken under protection.