2024-12-02 15:00 update: 2024-12-02, 15:05
Fot. PAP/Leszek Szymański
Former head of the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) has been detained and forcibly brought to a hearing in front of an investigative commission into the wiretapping scandal, a spokesperson for the interior ministry has reported.
The detainment of Piotr Pogonowski was announced by Jacek Dobrzynski in a post on the X platform.
"On Monday, police officers detained the former head of the Internal Security Agency. He was detained based on an order issued by the District Court in Warsaw, 12th Criminal Department, on November 21, 2024, regarding detention and forced transportation to a meeting of the Sejm investigative committee," Dobrzynski wrote.
Pogonowski’s detainment was also addressed by Interior Minister Tomasz Siemoniak, who wrote on X: "Everyone is equal in the face of the law. Everyone."
According to the latest reports, Pogonowski has been successfully brought in for questioning.
The case revolves around the alleged illegal use of the highly-invasive Pegasus spyware by the previous government of the nationalist-leaning Law and Justice (PiS) against the then opposition politicians, lawyers and other figures criticising PiS.
In the past, Pogonowski did not appear at his hearings three times already, justifying his absence by referring to the ruling of the Constitutional Tribunal, the country’s top court, which deemed the commission’s work as unconstitutional. However, after acquiring the opinion of legal experts, the commission decided that Pogonowski’s absence at his scheduled hearings renders the use of compulsory measures in the form of forced witness attendance.
At a press briefing before Monday’s sitting of the commission, Mariusz Blaszczak, the head of PiS, announced that his party will file a notice with the prosecutor’s office in connection to Pogonowski’s detainment.
"The rulings of the Constitutional Tribunal are irrefutable. The ruling had been disregarded by the ruling parliamentary majority in our country," he said. "We stand in opposition to this, a notification will be issued to the prosecutor’s office."
Since the current centrist coalition government under Donald Tusk took over power in the 2023 general election, the rulings of the Constitutional Tribunal have been questioned. PiS (now in opposition) has been accused of having politicised it while in power in 2015-2023, along with several other state authorities. The Constitutional Tribunal still has several former PiS members and loyalists in its line-up, a fact that calls its legitimacy as an independent organ into question. (PAP)
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