WARSAW:  The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski,  died in a plane crash today,  he was a child star who went on to form a formidable political double act with his identical twin Jaroslaw.

In 2005 Kaczynski became 3rd democratically elected president after the fall of communist power in 1989, he followed the footsteps of the legendary Lech Walesa and Aleksander Kwasniewski.

He had been expected to stand for re-election in a presidential poll due later this year.

Born in 1949 in Warsaw, he  and his elder twin by 45 minutes were inseparable as children. At the age 12 , two played the title roles in a film, “The Little Hoodlums Who Tried to Steal the Moon”

Both Studied in law at the University of Warsaw, they together in the anti-communist opposition.
Both were close to Solidarity founder Walesa in the 1980s.

Once communism was toppled in Poland in 1989, each was elected senator in the country’s first free elections after World War II.