WARSAW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th January, 2021) A Polish court has started hearing a motion for arrest of Russian air traffic controllers who worked at the Smolensk airfield during the 2010 deadly plane crash with President Lech Kaczynski aboard, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Friday.
In September, Warsaw initiated a procedure for the dispatchers' arrest in absentia after the Polish commission re-investigating the crash said that their deliberate actions had been one of possible reasons behind the tragedy. The court's decision is expected to pave the way for an international arrest warrant.
The hearing in the Warsaw-Mokotow district court is closed to the press. The cases of the Russian air traffic controllers will be considered separately. Currently, the court is hearing a motion for the arrest of Pavel Plyusnin. Later in the day, the court is expected to move on to the case of Viktor Ryzhenko. The hearing into Nikolai Krasnokutsky will not take place today, according to a note on the courtroom's door.
On April 10, 2010, a Polish jet airliner carrying Kaczynski, his wife and officials crashed amid heavy fog as it attempted to land at an airfield near Smolensk. All 96 people aboard died. The Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee said that the flight crew's decision to not reroute the plane to another airdrome, despite bad weather conditions, led to the crash.
The first Polish commission that probed the crash arrived at similar conclusions, but the current Polish authorities have since set up a second commission to reinvestigate the tragedy.
Russia has repeatedly slammed Poland's probe into the crash as politicized, categorically rejecting any responsibility for the incident.
