Former Ministers Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik were arrested on Tuesday at the Presidential Palace, where they were offered shelter by President Andrzej Duda, in a ‘spectacular arrest’ that may have included a fake bus breakdown that kept the president from intervening, according to Polish media.
Despite the issue being quite old, the verdict in Kamiński and Wąsik’s case came only now, as in 2015, weeks after the conservative Law and Justice (PiS, ECR) party came to power, President Andrzej Duda issued a pardon to both politicians.
Still, lawyers questioned the president’s pardon as it was issued before a court issued a final ruling in his case. The opposition argued that the decision by Duda, a former PiS member, was political.
The court proceeding resumed when PiS lost power after October’s national elections and was replaced by a broad coalition of centrist and leftist parties (EPP/S&D/Renew/Left) led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
After the verdict, parliamentary speaker Szymon Hołownia (Poland 2050, Renew) revoked Kamiński and Wąsik’s MP mandates.
On Monday, the Warsaw-Śródmieście District Court decided not to accept applications for refusal to initiate enforcement proceedings against Kamiński and Wąsik.
The next day, Duda received them at the Presidential Palace at Warsaw’s Krakowskie Przedmieście Street to protect them from being arrested, which did not prevent police from entering the building to bring the two to the prison in Warsaw’s Grochów neighbourhood on Tuesday evening.
Bus breakout to prevent president from action
The moment of the arrest was not a coincidence, the media reported on Wednesday (10 January). The police surrounded the palace for the whole day and waited for a signal from the State Protection Service (SOP) when the president left the building.
The officers wanted to avoid the president being in the palace during the arrest, as they did not know how he would behave.
“He could attempt to protect them (Kamiński and Wąsik) physically by catching their hands or covering them with his own body,” an officer familiar with the details told Wirtualna Polska news outlet.
This would have either resulted in the police having to use physical force against the head of state or left it unable to act at all.
When the president left the Presidential Palace and moved to his other residence, the Belvedere Palace at Belwederska Street, where he was supposed to meet Belarussian opposition leader Sviatlana Tikhanouskaya, the SOP let the police, which entered the Presidential Palace.
The rapid police action caught Kamiński and Wąsik surprised, according to the officer. The police took the sentenced men’s smartphones and escorted them out of the palace to bring them to the arrest.
The head of the president’s office, Grażyna Ignaczak-Bandych, told the media that even a breakdown of a city bus that disrupted the traffic was a part of the well-coordinated action.
“When Mr President was informed what was happening in the (Presidential) Palace at that time, he wanted to return immediately, but it turned out that the exit from Belweder was blocked by a public transport bus,” she told pro-PiS Republika private broadcaster.
She called the police’s intervention “violating all rules, all norms,” which “the president will not consent to.”
Protests and hunger strike
PiS politicians came to the prison at Grenadierów Street when Kamiński and Wąsik were brought on Tuesday night to protest against the arrest of Kamiński and Wąsik, whom they called political prisoners and demand their release.
Even PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński was in attendance.
PiS has called a huge anti-government rally in Warsaw on Thursday to protest against Tusk’s cabinet’s controversial public media policies. The issue of Kamiński – currently protesting through a hunger strike – and Wąsik is also expected to be discussed.
“I declare that I treat my conviction (…) and depriving me of my parliamentary mandate as an act of political revenge. Therefore, as a political prisoner, I have been starting a hunger protest since the first day of my imprisonment,” he said in an announcement.
(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl)
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