Families received wrong bodies from air disaster

A PLANE crash in Russia in 2010 that claimed the lives of Poland’s president and 94 other people is once again troubling ties between Moscow and Warsaw, after the revelation that some grieving families received the wrong bodies to bury.

The remains of Polish Solidarity activist Anna Walentynowicz were swapped with the body of another victim, prosecutors said yesterday.

Investigators exhumed the two bodies last week after inconsistencies in documents provided by Russia, which oversaw the local investigation of the Smolensk disaster, raised doubts.

The discovery is likely to lead to further exhumations and spark protests over the investigation of the crash, which Russian authorities blamed on the government plane’s crew.

“The prosecutor’s office is looking into the issue of exchanging the bodies and is investigating the evidence,” said Colonel Zbigniew Rzepa, a spokesman for the military prosecutor’s office.

Ms Walentynowicz’s family said last week that they had proof that the body exhumed from a family grave in Gdansk was not hers.