Poland’s former interior minister goes on hunger strike while in custody – President Duda criticizes the authorities
Opposition supporters protest against the arrest of two MPs
Source: dpa/Rafal Guz
In Poland, two politicians from the replaced ruling party PiS were convicted of abuse of office. They sought protection from the police in the presidential palace – and were arrested there. It is the escalation of a conflict that could develop into a national crisis.
POlen’s imprisoned former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski went on hunger strike on the first day of his prison sentence. The replaced national-conservative ruling party PiS published a corresponding statement from the politician convicted of abuse of office on Wednesday on the X platform (formerly Twitter). Kaminski wrote that he considered his conviction to be political revenge.
Mariusz Kaminski, Poland’s imprisoned former interior minister
Source: AP/Czarek Sokolowski
Poland’s President Andrzej Duda criticized the authorities’ actions in the arrest of two convicted former members of the elected national-conservative PiS government. He was deeply shocked by “the zeal and brutality, both in legal, physical and media terms,” said Duda on Wednesday in Warsaw. He will not rest until former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski and his former State Secretary Maciej Wasik are released. Both are “crystal clear honest people”.
The PiS has called on its supporters to demonstrate in front of the Polish parliament in Warsaw on Thursday. They are supposed to protest against the policies of the new government, including the reform of the state media. On Wednesday evening, around 200 people gathered in front of the presidential palace in the capital, chanted anti-government slogans and called for the release of “political prisoners,” as a journalist from the AFP news agency reported.
The case of the two politicians has led to an escalation of the conflict between the new center-left government of Donald Tusk and the PiS camp. Since then, the EU and NATO country Poland has been on the brink of a national crisis. 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 official residence, the PiS politicians were caught there and taken into custody.
Duda pardoned the two after an initial trial in 2015. However, the Supreme Court declared this pardon to be unlawful because the appeal process was still ongoing at the time. Duda emphasized again on Wednesday that, in his opinion, the pardon was still valid.
The case of the two PiS politicians has a long history. In 2015, immediately after the PiS came to power, Duda pardoned Kaminski and Wasik in a controversial decision. Both had previously been sentenced in the first instance to three years in prison for abuse of office. The reason for the conviction was an affair uncovered in 2007, in which the anti-corruption agency, then headed by Kaminski, was said to have deliberately orchestrated a corruption case in order to discredit the then Agriculture Minister Andrzej Lepper. Kaminski and Wasik appealed the verdict.
Opposition supporters hold up a portrait of former Interior Minister Kaminski and former Deputy Interior Minister Wasik
Source: dpa/Radek Pietruszka
Last June, the Supreme Court overturned the presidential pardon of Kaminski and Wasik. According to the verdict, only those who have been legally convicted can be pardoned. Both had to face the trial again. At the end of December, the Warsaw District Court sentenced her to two years in prison. The court also ordered that both PiS politicians should not hold public office for five years and should lose their parliamentary mandate.
Duda had emphasized several times in the past few days that, in his opinion, the pardon continued to apply – but leading constitutional lawyers in Poland saw it differently. Both politicians had announced that they wanted to continue to fulfill their mandate as representatives and appear at parliamentary sessions.