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Polish investigators to take more test samples at presidential Tu-154 crash site

Poland’s presidential liner crashed near Smolensk on April 10, 2010 killing all 96 passengers on board, including President Lech Kaczynski

Photo ITAR-TASS

Photo ITAR-TASS

WARSAW, July 20 (Itar-Tass) - A Polish prosecutor and four accompanying experts will go to Russia on Monday, July 22, to visit the site where the presidential Tu-154 jet liner crashed near Smolensk in the spring of 2010, Poland’s Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office said on Friday.

According to its spokesman, the experts are to take test samples from the passenger seats.

“There will be a second examination of the seats’ fragments with the use of portable detectors. Some samples will be taken for further laboratory tests in Poland,” the official said, adding that bad weather had prevented Polish investigators from taking the samples when they visited Smolensk last autumn.

At the end of June Poland’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office said that experts had studied 258 samples taken on the site of the crash to have detected no traces of any explosives. To make the picture complete the experts are now to study fragments of passenger seats. The spokesman said it would be possible to rule out an explosion on board the plane only when the results of all tests were pieced together.

Poland’s presidential liner crashed near Smolensk on April 10, 2010 killing all 96 passengers on board, including President Lech Kaczynski.

A Polish government inquiry arrived at the conclusion that the plane crashed because it had lowered below the maximum permissible altitude at an excessive speed in weather conditions not allowing visual contact with the surface and also because attempts at making another approach attempt began to be made too late.

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