Macierewicz said the report "may and should be the basis for taking international action, including filing a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights, a Council of Europe body."
Paweł Supernak/PAP

Poland may file a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights about the Smolensk air disaster, which claimed the lives of the Polish president and dozens of high-ranking officials, the head of an investigative body into the incident has said.

On April 10, 2010, President Lech Kaczynski, his wife, and 94 others were killed when their aircraft crashed as it came in to land at a military airfield near Smolensk, Russia.

Antoni Macierewicz, head of the investigative body, presented the final report into the crash on Monday which concluded that the disaster had not been an accident, but an assassination carried out with explosives placed “in the left wing and the wing centre section”.

Macierewicz said the report “may and should be the basis for taking international action, including filing a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights, a Council of Europe body.”

Two official investigations into the disaster concluded it was an accident, but Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin of the late president and leader of Law and Justice (PiS), the governing party, has always maintained his brother was assassinated.

The PiS government set up the special sub-committee to investigate the incident, and appointed Macierewicz, a close Kaczynski ally, to run it.

The president and his accompanying delegation were on their way to nearby Katyn to attend events marking the 70th anniversary of the 1940 Katyn Massacre, in which close to 22,000 Polish POWs, mainly army officers, policemen and administration staff, were murdered at the hands of the Soviets.