Poland
PiS politicians who are legally convicted end up in prison
Supporters of the Law and Justice party (PiS) protest against the arrest of the two MPs. photo
© Rafal Guz/PAP/dpa
The president offers two PiS MPs protection in his palace. The police finally take the convicts away. Party leader Kaczynski protests in front of the prison. He speaks of “political prisoners.”
After their arrest in the presidential palace, two convicted members of the national conservatives PiS ended up in prison. Former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski and his State Secretary Maciej Wasik were taken to the correctional facility, the police in Warsaw announced late Tuesday evening on the X platform (formerly Twitter).
A group of PiS MPs, including party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, gathered at night in front of the prison in the Grochow district of Warsaw. He described Kaminski and Wasik as “political prisoners” and demanded entry into the detention center in vain.
Escalation between the new government and PiS
The case of the two politicians led to an escalation of the conflict on Tuesday between the new center-left government of Donald Tusk and the camp of the national conservative PiS. Since then, the EU and NATO country Poland has been on the brink of a national crisis.
President Andrzej Duda, who comes from the PiS, received Kaminski and Wasik at the presidential palace on Tuesday while the police were supposed to take them to prison. After several hours in the palace, the PiS politicians were finally arrested there.
Kaminski and Wasik were sentenced to two years in prison for abuse of office in an appeal by a Warsaw district court in December and were due to begin their sentences. Duda pardoned the two after an initial trial in 2015. However, the Supreme Court declared this pardon to be unlawful because the professional procedure was still ongoing at the time. Duda had emphasized several times that in his opinion the pardon continued to apply.