Iustitia, an organisation for the rights of judges and the protection of the rule of law in Poland, has announced that it is demanding the protection of the judge who handed down the verdict in the case of the Neo-Nazi hooligans convicted of attacking a member of the LGBT community.
In mid-July, the fundamentalist Catholic institute Ordo Iuris petitioned President Andrzej Duda to pardon a 24-year-old nationalist sentenced to three years in prison who, in August 2020 attacked, along with three other radicals, a person returning from a pride march in Poznań carrying a rainbow bag in the colours of the LGBT community flag.
However, one of the women was released from prison by a decision of Poland’s Eurosceptic Justice Minister, Zbigniew Ziobro.
It soon emerged that the woman, who had been released from serving her sentence, held radical right-wing views and was involved in the neo-Nazi organisation ‘Front for National Cleansing’.
The campaign for her release has been accompanied by a right-wing campaign against the judges and prosecutors responsible for bringing charges and convicting the aggressor.
Ziobro himself announced that he would initiate an audit in the prosecutor’s office subordinate to him, which led to the conviction of the “patriot and defender of tradition”, who, in his eyes, was wrongly imprisoned.
As part of the right-wing campaign against the judge who convicted the right-wing radical of robbery, threats began to be made against her – both punitive, by radical Internet users, and by right-wing politicians demanding her resignation or official punishment.
The Iustitia association, which repeatedly acts as a defender of judges who have somehow fallen foul of the conservative Polish authorities, took the floor in the case.
The association announced that ”in view of the media coverage and threats made against the referring judge who issued the sentence in question,” it demanded that the services ‘ensure her protection and security’.
Bartłomiej Przymusiński, spokesman for the association, also commented on the situation during the press conference.
“A judge who acts based on the law, within the limits of the law, has the right to have her safety ensured by the state, and Poles have the right to have their daughters and mothers feel safe on the streets so that a situation does not arise in which a person is robbed on the street by some violent group for having this and that colour of the bag,” Przymusiński said.
The case of the release from prison of a convicted criminal with neo-Nazi views is highly controversial in Poland and is part of a trend of normalising the presence of the radical right in the Polish mainstream.
Earlier this week, a poll was published according to which the radical right-wing Confederation now enjoys a record 16% support among Poles.
(Bartosz Sieniawski | EURACTIV.pl)
Read more with EURACTIV
Slovak farmers call for regulations to protect farms from bear attacks
Source: euractiv.com
