2024-01-10 21:19 update: 2024-01-11, 16:04
Photo PAP/Paweł Supernak
Poland's former prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has called on the democratic community of the Western world not to look on passively at what is happening in Poland, in reference to two former MPs facing jail terms, who he described as "victims of the political vengeance of the new Donald Tusk government."
Morawiecki wrote on Facebook on Wednesday: "For the first time in 35 years, since the fall of communism and the great victory of Poles over totalitarianism - we have political prisoners in Poland.
"Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wasik are victims of the political vengeance of the new Donald Tusk government," the post continued, going on to call on Western democracies to "not look on passively at what is happening today in Poland."
The former prime minister attached a video to his Facebook post in which he talked about the situation surrounding Kaminski and Wasik and his appeal to the West.
On Tuesday evening, police detained the former interior minister, Kaminski, and his former deputy, Wasik, who were at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw at the time. They were seized under a court order for them to serve two years each in jail for convictions in December for abuse of power as Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA) heads back in 2007.
Despite being pardoned by the president for a 2015 conviction for masterminding an anti-corruption provocation, the two men were again convicted by a Warsaw court in December 2023. They subsequently lost their parliamentary seats though legal disputes surround the decision.
Both the president, Andrzej Duda, and Law and Justice (PiS), the political party of the two former MPs, maintain that the presidential pardon is still in force and that their recent convictions are void. (PAP)
ej/jch
