A court in Poland has upheld the Prosecutor General’s Office’s request to issue a temporary arrest warrant for one of Russia’s air-traffic controllers, on duty at the time, when the Tu-154M airliner carrying senior government officials on board crashed in Russia on April 10, 2010, the court said Thursday.

In its published statement, the court upheld the request for the arrest of Victor R. for 30 days from the detention date.

The hearing was held in absentia, behind closed doors. A request for the provisional arrest of another air-traffic controller, Nikolay Krasnokudsky, was declined. Both decisions are not final, and can be appealed against. On May 28, the court found no grounds for the arrest of a third controller, Pavel Plyusnin.

Polish prosecutors, investigating the catastrophe of the plane carrying Polish President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, demanded in September 2020 the arrest of the three Russian air-traffic controllers, accusing them of deliberately causing the disaster.

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed the accusations as absurd, saying Warsaw had been ignoring facts and trying to make political hay out of the tragedy.

The plane crashed upon approaching the Severny air base near Smolensk under poor visibility conditions. All 96 people aboard were killed.

The cause of the tragedy, according to international experts, was the crew’s decision to descend despite poor weather conditions, which they made feeling enormous psychological pressure.