Lech Kaczynski Remains: Polish Prez's Coffin Contains Parts From 2 Others

Lech Kaczynski's remains, buried in a coffin that was exhumed last fall as the investigation into the plane crash that killed the former Polish president and nearly 100 others was reopened, reportedly contain the body parts of two other people.

Polish Deputy Prosecutor General Marek Pasionek said Thursday that the remains in two coffins had been swapped and that nine other coffins from the crash contained a mixture of different remains as well, according to BBC News. 

Kaczynski — along with 95 others, including his wife and dozens of top officials — died in a 2010 plane crash in western Russia as he was headed to a ceremony to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, BBC News reported.

The reason for the crash, which was initially blamed on pilot error, has long been challenged. Some believe there may have been an explosion on board, or that Russian air traffic controllers misled the crew intentionally, according to the news website.

Kaczynski's twin brother Jaroslaw helped lead the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS) to power in 2015, and the investigation into the plane crash has since been reopened. That's what triggered the exhumations of 27 coffins, to date.

"What this painful and shameful discovery shows is that the autopsies on the victims' remains, carried out in Russia in the days after the crash, were inadequate, rushed, and flawed," BBC News correspondent Adam Easton wrote.

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