The plane crash in which Polish President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others died was a crime, the head of a Polish committee investigating the crash was quoted by Polish Radio as saying on Tuesday.

Last week a Polish TV station claimed the pilots of the plane that crashed in west Russia on April 10 were under pressure to land in thick fog.

Addressing the first session of the committee, formed earlier in July, Antoni Macierewicz said the political responsibility for the Smolensk catastrophe was "clear"

"I have no doubts, that what we have here is a situation which is so dreadful [...] that every word which inflates the drama is justified," he said.

Macierewicz has previously used the word "crime" to describe the Russian probe into the incident.

The move to create the so-called Law and Justice Smolensk committee came after Lech Kaczynski's twin brother, Jaroslaw, told his supporters after the second round of voting for the Polish presidential elections at the beginning of July that a public movement had arisen following the death of his brother. Jaroslaw later said he had a "moral duty" to perform his own investigation into the crash.

A plane carrying Kaczynski, his wife, 88 officials and eight crew members, crashed en route to Smolensk after hitting trees as it attempted to land. The high-ranking delegation was due to attend a memorial ceremony for the victims of the 1940 Katyn massacre in which Soviet secret police killed thousands of Polish military officers.

MOSCOW, July 20 (RIA Novosti)