Polish military prosecutor shot himself after news conference on probe into mystery air crash that killed country's president

• Mikolaj Przybyl had just defended military probe into leaks relating to plane crash that killed Poland's president
• He is in stable condition with injuries to his face

9th January 2012
A Polish prosecutor shot himself today in dramatic footage caught on film in his office after cutting short a news conference.
Moments earlier, he had defended a military investigation into leaks related to a plane crash that killed Poland's president two years ago.
At the start of the conference at his office in Poznan, Colonel Mikolaj Przybyl said: 'During my entire service as a civilian and later military prosecutor, I have never brought shame to the Republic of Poland and I will protect the honour of an officer of the Polish armed forces and prosecution.
'Thank you, please give me a five-minute break, I need to rest,' Przybyl said, as the reporters then leave the room.
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Polish prosecutor Mikolaj Przybyl at the start of the news conference in Poznan, western Poland

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He defended a military investigation into leaks related to a plane crash that killed Poland's president two years ago

With the camera still rolling, he walks across the floor and, just out of shot, a pistol can be heard being reloaded and then a gunshot sounded.
As he slumps to the ground, only his feet are in the frame.
He was immediately taken to hospital after reporters found him lying in a pool of blood.

 

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Hospital director Leslaw Lenartowicz said Przybyl is in stable condition, conscious, and his life is not in danger. He added that Przybyl had suffered injuries to his face.
Przybyl is a deputy head of the prosecutor's office and the head of a local department investigating organised crime in the army.

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He then asked the reporters to leave as he 'needs a rest'

With the camera still rolling, he crosses to the other side of his office after the journalists have left

After shooting himself, his body slumped to the floor, with just his shoe visible in the frame (arrowed)

He had asked the reporters to leave his office after he criticised media leaks from the continuing probe into the plane crash in Russia on April 10, 2010, that killed then-president Lech Kaczynski and 95 others, mostly senior Polish officials.
During his brief news conference, Przybyl said the military prosecutor's office had the right to seek phone records of journalists covering the investigation of the crash.
He read a statement to reporters in which he objected to plans by Prosecutor General Andrzej Seremet to put military prosecutors under civilian authority.
Seremet said that such a decision has not been made yet.
Przybyl also said that military prosecutors were proving themselves competent in the many probes that they have opened into organised crime cases inside the army.

Przybyl was taken to hospital, where he is in a stable condition with injuries to his face

The death toll from the plane crash included the country's president and wife, its central bank head and the country's military chief along with other senior government and military figures

Dead: Polish President Lech Kaczynski and wife Maria were among those who perished in the crash

The probes primarily concern suspicions of corruption in buying equipment for Poland's troops on missions in Afghanistan and, earlier, in Iraq.

Przybyl denied media suggestions that the military prosecutors broke the law while investigating the crash.
The media have alleged that the prosecutors had sought billing lists and text message content of mobile phones of some reporters to determine the source of leaks to the media.  Several news outlets showed footage of Przybyl's body behind his desk before an ambulance took him to a hospital.
A spokesman for the military prosecutor's office was not available for comment.
'According to the information available, the prosecutor is alive, he is being treated in the hospital and the site is being investigated by the prosecutors and military police,' said spokesman of Poznan military prosecutors office Slawomir Schewe.
Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski said in a statement he was 'concerned' about the suicide attempt and asked the head of the national security bureau to monitor the situation.
Some lawmakers are calling for a special parliamentary probe into the case.

RUSSIA BLAMES DRINKING POLISH COMMANDER FOR PLANE CRASH

The wreckage of the Polish president's plane lies in woodland near Smolensk airport in Russia

Russia fully blamed Poland for the deadly plane crash which killed the Polish president.
Russian officials investigating the plane crash that killed Lech Kaczynski said the crew was pressured to land in bad weather by an air force commander who had been drinking.
Kaczynski and 95 others, including his wife, died in April 2010 when their plane crashed while trying to land in Smolensk, Russia. There were no survivors.
Officials of the Interstate Aviation Committee, which investigates crashes in much of the former Soviet Union, said that the pilots were pressured to land by Poland's air force commander, General Andrzej Blasik, who was in the cockpit.
They said he had a blood-alcohol level of about 0.06 percent, enough to impair reasoning.
Blasik's presence in the cockpit 'had a psychological influence on the commander's decision to take an unjustified risk by continuing the descent with the predominant goal of landing against the odds,' the committee chairwoman Tatiana Anodina told a news conference last January. 

The report found no fault with Russian air traffic controllers.
Polish officials have already complained that previous drafts of Russia's report should have questioned whether controllers should have allowed the plane to land in poor visibility.
In December 2010, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk accused the Russian investigators of negligence and mistakes.
Kaczynski and his delegation were on their way to attend a ceremony commemorating the victims of the 1940 Katyn massacre, in which 20,000 Polish officers and other prisoners of war were killed by the Soviet secret police.

The symbolic importance of Kaczynski's planned visit apparently increased the pressure to land the aircraft despite the poor conditions.
But the head of the committee's technical commission, Alexei Morozov, said there was no 'concrete command' from Kaczynski to land.
The blood-alcohol content found in Blasik was lower than what is generally considered outright intoxication.
But the professional pilots and physicians group says 'the number of serious errors committed by pilots dramatically increases at or above concentrations of 0.04 percent,' lower than Blasik's level.