POLAND ACCUSES RUSSIAN OFFICERS OF LOOTING PRESIDENTIAL PLANE AFTER CRASH

WARSAW, Poland — Polish authorities said Monday that someone stole a credit card from the wreckage of the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others in Russia, and the card was then used to withdraw cash.

President Lech Kaczynski

Russian news services reported late Monday that three soldiers have been arrested on suspicion of having stolen personal belongings of a crash victim.

An unnamed source told the Itar-Tass news agency that the three conscripts were attached to the airport in the Russian city of Smolensk, where the plane was supposed to land. The source was quoted as saying investigators have evidence against the suspects.


Mourners laying wreath @ the presidential palace ground ,Warsaw

Previously Russia's Interior Ministry had denied the reports from Poland.
Monika Lewandowska, a spokeswoman for Warsaw prosecutors, said the equivalent of 6,000 Polish zlotys ($1,700) was withdrawn from the account of Andrzej Przewoznik, who died in the crash April 10 near Smolensk. Przewoznik was a prominent official who oversaw Poland's wartime memorials.

The wreckage of the aircraft carrying President Lech Kaczynski crashed as it approached Smolensk airport in western Russia on Saturday morning.

Lewandowska told The Associated Press that two cards were stolen and that one was used just hours later, in the first of 11 withdrawals over three days from an automatic teller machine in Smolensk.

A piece of the wreckage of the Polish government aeroplane TU 154-M is seen in a field close to the airport in Smolensk, Russia Photo: EPA

A second card belonging to Przewoznik was also stolen and there were six failed attempts to obtain money using that one, Lewandowska said.
Polish military prosecutors working on the main investigation into the crash discovered the cash withdrawals and have notified Russia, Lewandowska said.
Kaczynski's plane crashed in heavy fog as it was carrying him and a high-ranking delegation to a memorial ceremony for 22,000 Polish prisoners of war massacred at the start of World War II by Josef Stalin's secret forces.

Kaczynski, his wife and all 94 others on board – among them many of Poland's top military leaders – were killed when the aircraft crashed in thick fog.
Investigators have not made final conclusions about the cause of the crash, but say that evidence so far points to pilot error and the heavy fog.


A man lowers the Polish national flag outside the Polish Embassy in London Photo: REUTERS

Lech Walesa, for long a political adversary of the late president, made clear his sense of shock.

"The Soviets killed Polish elites in Katyn 70 years ago. Today, the Polish elite died there while getting ready to pay homage to the Poles killed there," he said.

Speaking in a television address, Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, put aside his country's fraught relationship with Poland. "In the name of the Russian people, I offer my deepest, truest condolences to the Polish people, feelings of compassion and support for the relatives and loved ones of those killed," he said.

Along with the president, the crash claimed the lives of the head of the Polish armed forces, the head of the Polish national bank, the deputy foreign minister and a number of army's most senior commanders.

The death of President Kaczynski blows a massive hole in Poland's political landscape. The president, a dominant force in Polish politics over the past ten years, was due to contest a presidential election in October.
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Adapted from,Associated Press