Russian soldiers charged with theft from Polish crash victim

Russia on Tuesday charged four of its soldiers with credit-card theft from a victim of the plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski, investigators said.

“Today, four soldiers have been charged with theft,” the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement, adding that the conscripts had been inside the police cordon following the crash.

“All four suspects have confessed and are actively cooperating with investigators,” it said.

Earlier Polish officials said a total of 6,000 zlotys (1,500 euros) were withdrawn from the bank account of Andrezej Przewoznik, who headed Poland’s national war memorial committee and perished in the air crash.

He was part of the Polish delegation heading to Katyn near the western Russian city of Smolensk for a ceremony marking the 1940 massacre of thousands of Polish army officers at the orders of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.