{"id":522892,"date":"2010-04-10T13:30:10","date_gmt":"2010-04-10T17:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=77718"},"modified":"2010-04-10T13:30:10","modified_gmt":"2010-04-10T17:30:10","slug":"polish-president-dozens-of-high-ranking-officials-die-in-plane-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/522892","title":{"rendered":"Polish President, Dozens Of High-Ranking Officials Die In Plane Crash"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_77729\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"width: 288px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-77729\" title=\"Poland_CIAFactbook\" src=\"http:\/\/static1.firedoglake.com\/1\/files\/2010\/04\/Poland_CIAFactbook-278x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"278\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">graphic: CIA Factbook<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>A true <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/04\/11\/world\/europe\/11poland.html?hp\">tragedy<\/a> and a political crisis in Poland:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div class='wbq'>\n<p>A plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and dozens of the country\u2019s top political and military leaders crashed in a heavy fog in western Russia on Saturday morning, killing everyone aboard.<\/p>\n<p>Television showed chunks of flaming fuselage scattered in a bare forest near Smolensk, where the president was arriving for a ceremony commemorating the murder of more than 20,000 Polish officers by the Soviet secret police after the Red Army invaded Poland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The irony, noted above, is that they were headed to Russia to commemorate the Katyn massacre.  As former President Aleksander Kwasniewski told Polish TV today, \u201cIt is a damned place.\u201d  The leader of the lower house of Parliament now takes over as President, but must call elections within 60 days.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see, a substantial chunk of the political class was on the plane:<span id=\"more-77718\"><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div class='wbq'>\n<p>Among those on board, according to the Web site of the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, were Mr. Kaczynski; his wife, Maria; former Polish president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski; the deputy speaker of Poland\u2019s parliament, Jerzy Szmajdzinski; the head of the president\u2019s chancellery, Wladyslaw Stasiak; the head of the National Security Bureau, Aleksander Szczyglo; the deputy minister of foreign affairs, Andrzej Kremer; the chief of the general staff of the Polish army, Franciszek Gagor; the president of Poland\u2019s national bank, Slawomir Skrzypek; the commissioner for civil rights protection, Janusz Kochanowski; the heads of all of Poland\u2019s armed forces; and dozens of members of parliament.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Kaczynski has an identical twin brother who runs the conservative Law and Justice Party he represented as President and who used to serve as Prime Minister.<\/p>\n<p>In a <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/blog-briefing-room\/news\/91449-obama-offers-condolences-on-polish-tragedy\">statement<\/a>, President Obama called the loss &#8220;devastating.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"akst_link\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/news.firedoglake.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/share-this\/share-icon-16x16.gif\" alt=\"Share This icon\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=77718&amp;akst_action=share-this\"  title=\"Email, post to del.icio.us, etc.\" id=\"akst_link_77718\" class=\"akst_share_link\" rel=\"noindex nofollow\">&nbsp;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>graphic: CIA Factbook A true tragedy and a political crisis in Poland: A plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, and dozens of the country\u2019s top political and military leaders crashed in a heavy fog in western Russia on Saturday morning, killing everyone aboard. Television showed chunks of flaming fuselage scattered in a bare forest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4406,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-522892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4406"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}