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Witness in Polish airliner crash at Smolensk commits suicide

The flight engineer was one of the key witnesses in the case of the 2010 crash, as he listened to the voice conversation of the Tu-154 crew with the Smolensk traffic controller

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 committed suicide, in all likelihood, spokesman for the Warsaw district prosecutor’s office Dariusz Slepokura reported on Monday. Remigiusz Mus was found dead in the basement of his house late on Saturday.

Mus, a flight engineer from a Polish Yak-40 airliner which landed in Smolensk on April 10, 2010 with a group of reporters on board an hour before the crash, was found hanged late on Saturday in his house in the suburbs of the Polish capital. The wife of 42-year-old Remigiusz Mus found the body. She tried to resuscitate him, but it was late. Emergency medics rushed to the scene certified his death.

The flight engineer was one of the key witnesses in the case of the 2010 crash, as he listened to the voice conversation of the Tu-154 crew with the Smolensk traffic controller. In his testimonials, Mus said the 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 descend to the altitude of 50 meters. Soon after the crash Mus retired.

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.

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