TROTYL EVAPORATED OUT OF THE WRECKAGE

ARTUR STELMASIAK

At a press conference of the Chief Military Prosecutors there were a lot of questions. Unfortunately, most of them remained unanswered

In the recent months the prosecutors’ investigation into the Smoleńsk catastrophe became a subject of criticism not only from journalists and from opposition, but also the very prime minister Donald Tusk. He said that he is not glad about the informative policy of the military prosecutors.

The Chief of the Chief Military Prosecutors, colonel Jerzy Artymiak felt, as if he had been called to the blackboard. He exchanged the previous spokesman – colonel Zbigniew Rzepa into lieutenant colonel Janusz Wójcik. The press conference also looked different. There were a lot of attacks and personal remarks addressed to journalists and mocking digressions about the quality of their work. Procurators were answering questions evasively or were not answering then at all. In this way the investigators were concealing their lack of preparation - instead of answers to questions, we had irritation and an attempt to depriving us of a voice. At moments one could feel that these were journalists who knew some meanders of the investigation better than prosecutors.

It was clear that the purpose of the conference was one: a clear message was to be sent to the world, that no explosion materials had been found in the wreckage Tu-154M. So, can we exclude an explosion?- It is impossible to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in a binding way – the colonel Ireneusz Szeląg explained. – Carrying out laboratory investigations is only one of the elements which is considered by investigators. Other evidences are the samples of the birch secured near the airport in Smoleńsk and data of the body section of the casualties – the colonel Szeląg added and he announced that the expert prosecutors would go to the place of the Smoleńsk catastrophe once again at the turn of July and August.

Informative policy

A preliminary and incomplete investigation of expert prosecutors, concerning laboratory experiments of the samples of the so-called swabs taken from the wreckage Tu-154M turned out to be a pretext for convening a conference. This matter was urgent because last year a publication in the Polish newspaper ‘Rzeczpospolita’ entitled ‘Trotyl in Tupolew’ shocked the Polish public opinion. After the press conference of the Chief Military Prosecutors, some journalists of ‘Rz’ and ‘Uważam Rze’ lost their work. – Today I would write the same text, because procurators confirmed my version. Detectors detected chemicals about which I wrote. The text did not say anything about an explosion or an assassination – Cezary Gmyz, the author of the popular article, said to ‘Niedziela’.

According to the preliminary analysis of expert procurators, no explosion materials were found in the samples taken from the wreckage of the airplane. Although laboratory experiments confirmed the presence of nitroglycerin, diphenylamine and para-nitrodiphenlyoamine, the colonel Szeląg noted that nitroglycerin can derive from medication for heart called ‘Nitromin’. Diphenylamine and para-nitrodiphenlyoamine can be used as stabilizers of smokeless powder. But detection of them – in the opinion of the colonel Szeląg – does not have to prove an explosion because derivations of combustion were not found on the samples.

– It is only a part of the investigation process, insufficient to carry out an expertise which could confirm an explosion or its lack – said colonel Szeląg. He also pointed out that the samples had been tested with the most modern methods, among the others, with the usage of an electron microscope. However, he was not able to answer the question how detectors were set up, which were investigating the wreckage and the ground in Smoleńsk, nor where the samples had been taken from exactly.

What is the conference for?

Although the press conference was to be a disclaimer of what was written by Gmyz, and what was confirmed by procurators in the Seym, there was not a convincing answer to the question, why spectrometers had showed the presence of explosion materials and now there are no sign of them’. Last year it was said about a sausage and now that prosecutors experts ‘had rescaled spectrometers high’. As a result, they showed explosion materials where they weren’t.

– Either the devices which we took to Smoleńsk were useless, or procurators experts did not know how to use them. Another explanation for this phenomenon can be only a statement that after the samples had been for three months in Moscow, the detected substances evaporated.

Arrogance of procurators shocked the families of casualties. They arrived in the conference , because prosecutors did not give them the opinion of the prosecutors. – I wanted to come here in order hear with my ears, not to find out about it later from media clippings – says Ewa Kochanowska to ‘Niedziela’, a widow of the Spokesman of Civilian Rights. – Now I am thinking what this conference was for. What is its second bottom. Not the informative one, for sure.

Stanisław Zagrodzki, the cousin of the late Ewa Bąkowska, is disgusted with the policy of prosecutors. – It is strange because I did not find out about anything new. I do not have any information, which I could verify with other expertises. We do not know where the samples were taken from, and in what way – he explains.

Procurators did not resist pressures and inconvenient questions. They were aiming at the quickest end of the conference, by encouraging the inquisitive to send e-mails. It raised an outrage among journalists, as well as families of the casualties. Andrzej Melak, a brother of the late Stefan Melak could not help but ask the question: - Were the elements of the airplane, which had arrived in Poland, investigated according to the presence of explosive materials? - No, they weren’t – the colonel Szeląg said briefly .

When did the military procurators make a decision about investigating a possible explosion? – This thread is being investigated from the beginning of the investigation and nothing in this matter has changed till today – answered the chief of the Chief Military Prosecutors, the colonel Artymiak.

(AA)

"Niedziela" 27/2013

Editor: Tygodnik Katolicki "Niedziela", ul. 3 Maja 12, 42-200 Czestochowa, Polska
Editor-in-chief: Fr Jaroslaw Grabowski • E-mail: redakcja@niedziela.pl