Warsaw - Ria Novosti
Polish prosecutors have charged two senior officers who trained pilots who flew the plane that crashed in western Russia with President Lech Kaczynski on board in April 2010. A spokesman for the military district prosecutor's office did not name the officers, but said they face up to three years in prison over their failure to properly train the crew. The officers have said they are innocent of the charges. The TU-154 plane carrying Kaczynski and a delegation of senior officials crashed in heavy fog as it attempted to land at an airfield near the western Russian city of Smolensk. There were new survivors. In mid-January, the Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) released a Russian report into the accident, which put the blame on the Polish crew. But, in a separate report, Poland partially blamed Russian air controllers for the tragedy.