Polish president criticized for condolence message to Iranians

Polish President Andrzej Duda has come in for criticism from his fellow Poles for comparing the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash with the death of Polish President Lech Kaczynski in a plane crash 14 years ago.

Expressing his condolences to the Iranian people, Duda said in a post on the X messaging service that few nations had tragic pages like this in their history books.

"But we Poles, who were affected by the crash of the Polish government aircraft at Smolensk in Russia in 2010 know the feeling of shock and the emptiness that remains in the hearts of the people and in the state following the sudden loss of the political and social elite, following the sudden loss of loved people and friends," Duda said.

All 96 aboard the Polish government aircraft that crashed as it was coming in to land on April 10, 2010 were killed. They had been on their way to a commemorative service for the victims of the Katyn massacre.

The massacre is notorious for the murder of thousands of Polish officers and other members of the Polish elite by the Soviet Union's secret police, the NKVD in 1940.

Many Poles said they were offended at the way Duda compared the late Polish president with Raisi, who is alleged to have been responsible for the execution of thousands of Iranian political dissidents in 1988.

"Duda is mourning a criminal and Putin ally," one of them posted on social media alongside a picture showing Iranian dissidents being hanged by crane.

Bartosz Wielinski, editor-in-chief of the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, said that he understood that Duda as Polish president had to express his condolences. But the reference to Smolensk had been "deeply inappropriate," he added.