Poland questions Tusk in probe of 2010 crash

Case seen as attempt to humiliate political rival

WARSAW, Poland — Polish investigators questioned Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, for more than eight hours Thursday as a witness in an investigation into the 2010 plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski in a case widely seen as an attempt to discredit and humiliate the EU leader by his longtime rival.

Ahead of the interrogation, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the country’s ruling party leader and the brother of the former president, said Tusk “should be afraid.”

But Tusk emerged from the questioning by Polish prosecutors saying he would not be intimated by the proceedings, which his lawyer described as politically motivated.

“I do not have anything to fear. And Mr. Kaczynski will not scare me, no matter how badly he wants to get me,” Tusk told reporters after the questioning ended.

He said for legal reasons he could not comment on the questioning.

Tusk was the Polish prime minister at the time of the 2010 crash, which occurred in Russia and killed 96 people, many of them top Polish state and military officials.

Prosecutors said they are trying to determine why Polish authorities of the time did not take part in the autopsies, which were performed by Russians and later shown to be sloppy. Exhumations have revealed that some body parts got mixed up and were buried in the wrong graves.

Tusk’s Polish supporters see the questioning as part of a bitter feud going back years that pits him against Kaczynski.

Kaczynski’s latest steps include the conservative ruling party’s attempts to put the justice system under his party’s control. The European Union says the planned judicial changes erode the rule of law and has opened an infringement procedure against Poland.