Remains of Polish president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski exhumed
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
22.10.2012 09:15
The body of former Polish president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski has become the latest Smolensk disaster victim to be exhumed after concerns that his remains were wrongly labelled by Russians.
President-in-exile's body exhumed in Warsaw, Monday: photo - PAP/Pawel Supernak
Forensic teams moved in to the Temple of Divine Providence in southern Warsaw to carry out the procedure at around 4.30 local time Monday morning and ended work around 6.00 am.
The exhumation follows the discovery earlier this month that the remains of Anna Walentynowicz - who died along with Kaczorowski, President Lech Kaczynski and 93 others in the April 2010 Smolensk air disaster in western Russia – was buried in the wrong grave.
Another exhumation has also been carried out at the Powazki Military cemetery in Warsaw.
The coffins are being transported to the Department of Forensic Medicine at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
Last week Dr Viktor Kolkutin, the Russian doctor in charge of the identifications of victims, claimed that his team's work could not be held responsible.
“I can only say that absolutely everyone received what they identified,” Dr Viktor Kolkutin told the Polish edition of Newsweek.
“What happened after the coffins departed from Moscow to Poland we do not know,” he said. (pg/nh)