A new team of prosecutors for Smolensk investigation
SCND: March 23, 2016
Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced that he is about to appoint a team of prosecutors to investigate the case of the Smolensk disaster. The team will be chaired by Deputy Attorney General Mark Pasionek, and will consist of experienced prosecutors from around the country - he said.
"The team will be charged with conducting a comprehensive examination of the entire documentation related to the Smolensk tragedy, including major themes as well as peripheral issues, and then to continue this investigation based on evidence identified," said Minister of Justice and Attorney General.
Ziobro noted that he is about to issue a decree on the formation of a new team of prosecutors and its composition will be disclosed to the public.
"The team will be led by Attorney Pasionek, Deputy Attorney General and a very experienced prosecutor, a close associate and trusted colleague of late Attorney General Zbigniew Wassermann. Pasionek was his team member in the governments from 2005 to 2007. He also has a strong motivation to explain this matter to the end as much as possible," said Ziobro.
The Minister stressed that Prosecutor Pasionek put together a team of highly experienced prosecutors from around the country.
"The passage of time is always the greatest enemy of each prosecutor and investigator. (...) How much of the truth we can still uncover only time will tell, but the prosecutors will do everything possible to uncover the truth under the supervision of Attorney Pasionek. I am convinced that they will not disregard any evidence and will show initiative to pursue evidence wherever it is possible, wherever it will be still be possible, " said Ziobro.
Ziobro declared that the professional prosecutors will conduct professional investigation. "I do not know if anyone could assume that the matter of this investigation related to the greatest tragedy will be hidden or left uncovered. We said clearly that this case must be thoroughly investigated and we will get to the bottom of it and explain all the details. And we keep our promise" - Ziobro said.
From the Editor's Desk: A real-life political thriller about an American financier in the Wild East of Russia, the murder of his principled young tax attorney, and his dangerous mission to expose the Kremlin’s corruption.
In 2007, a group of law enforcement officers raided Browder’s offices in Moscow and stole $230 million of taxes that his fund’s companies had paid to the Russian government. Browder’s attorney Sergei Magnitsky investigated the incident and uncovered a sprawling criminal enterprise. A month after Sergei testified against the officials involved, he was arrested and thrown into pre-trial detention, where he was tortured for a year. On November 16, 2009, he was led to an isolation chamber, handcuffed to a bedrail, and beaten to death by eight guards in full riot gear.
From the Editor's Desk: A chilling and unflinching portrait of one of the most fearsome figures in world politics.
In 1999, the “Family” surrounding Boris Yeltsin went looking for a successor to the ailing and increasingly unpopular president. Vladimir Putin, with very little governmental or administrative experience - he’d been deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, and briefly, director of the secret police - nevertheless seemed the perfect choice: a “faceless” creature whom Yeltsin and his cronies could mold in their own image. Russia and an infatuated West were determined to see in him the progressive leader of their dreams - even as Putin, with ruthless efficiency, dismantled the country’s media, wrested control and wealth from the business class, and destroyed the fragile mechanisms of democracy.
From the Editor's Desk: "Blowing Up Russia" contains the allegations of ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko against his former spymasters in Moscow which led to his being murdered in London in November 2006. In the book he and historian Yuri Felshtinsky detail how since 1999 the Russian secret service has been hatching a plot to return to the terror that was the hallmark of the KGB.
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Already during the first night of the crash, the Russians were removing the most important pieces of evidence from the crash site, that is, the remains of the Polish President’s Tupolev, TU-154M. Parts of the aircraft were transported away without any prior planning, and some of them were purposefully destroyed. Read more here
"Russian Image Management"
The trip to Smolensk was expected to highlight Russia finally admitting culpability in the massacre, after long having blamed it on the Germans, an atrocity they had tried to conceal for over 70 years.
As for the reception committee, it had different ideas. Putin wasn’t looking forward to such an occasion. Into this poisonous reception brew was President Kaczynski’s well-known public criticism of Moscow and Putin, a habit that has ended the lives of others within Russia – and abroad. A few discouraging Russian requirements – that Kaczynski could not attend in any official capacity – did not halt the Poles. Kaczynski would go anyway on non-official, “personal” business. To Russians, such a distinction would be meaningless, not lessening the possible international excoriation of such an event. A problem ripe for a modern, Russian solution: a tragic, ‘natural’ accident.
World-renowned forensic pathologist goes on the record: "I have been doing autopsies for 50 years, and I've investigated more than fifteen, twenty airplane crashes […] I've been in countries all over the world where families think that the government is hiding something. Whether it is Zimbabwe or Israel, or Philippines, the government may not like an outside person checking to make sure they got it right. [But,] they never interfered with that. The family, the next of kin, always has the right to do what the wishes of the family are. In the 21st century, the body of the dead person no longer belongs to the state. It belongs to the family. So, it is unusual - something that I have never experienced before - where the government [of Poland] has not permitted the famil[ies]" to conduct independent forensic examinations of their loved ones' remains [...] I've never heard of a body coming back to a country and the family being unable to open up a casket. I've never heard of the family not being able to get an autopsy… Read more here
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