Sunday, April 11, 2010
WARSAW: The body of Poland's president Lech Kaczynski arrived back home Sunday as his stunned nation mourned the elite victims of a jet crash in Russia that has left intense focus on the pilots' last actions.

After observing a nationwide two-minute silence for the 96 dead, tens of thousands lined the route taken by the hearse from Warsaw airport to the presidential palace.

Draped in a red and white Polish flag, the coffin was met at the airport by a guard of honour and the president's identical twin brother Jaroslaw, a former prime minister.

The national anthem echoed across the tarmac and senior Catholic leaders said prayers for the victims who included top military, religious and state officials. Like many Poles, Kaczynski was deeply religious.

Kaczynski's adult daughter Marta knelt before her father's coffin. His twin then placed his hand briefly on the casket before making the sign of the cross.

Alongside them stood Kaczynski's long-time rival Prime Minister Donald Tusk and parliamentary speaker Bronislaw Komorowski, now interim head of state.

The coffin was then placed in a hearse as a military orchestra played the funeral march by Franco-Polish composer Frederic Chopin and driven slowly to the presidential palace past the huge crowds of mourners.

Poles had observed a two-minute silence on the stroke of midday. Motorists in Warsaw pulled up in the streets to stand in solemn attention while churches were packed at the start of a week-long national mourning.

In Russia, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was among those who attended a ceremony at the site of the crash near the western city of Smolensk before he watched the body of Kaczynski being placed on a Warsaw-bound plane.

As the Polish anthem was played, Putin laid red roses at the base of the stand bearing the coffin. A military bugle player sounded Taps, the solemn tune often played at state and military funerals, as Putin bowed his head.

All 96 people aboard the Tupolev Tu-154 jet were killed when it crashed into a forest and caught fire during thick fog on Saturday.

Putin is leading an official investigation into the crash, but Russian officials have already said the Polish pilots ignored air traffic control warnings that they were flying too low.

"The recordings that we have confirm that there were no technical problems with the plane," chief investigator Alexander Bastrykin told Putin at the crash site.

Fragments of the fuselage, air traffic control recordings and the plane's "black boxes" are being studied, Russia's investigative committee said.

The Russian-built jet was taking the delegation to a memorial service for 22,000 Poles massacred by Soviet troops in World War II when it hit tree tops in fog while approaching Smolensk airport.

The symbolism of the president's mission to a country which has long been a rival of Poland only added to the trauma.