2024-07-11 21:01 update: 2024-07-12, 14:54
Photo PAP/Pawel Supernak
Poland's Internal Security Agency (ABW) has launched a security check against the country's former ambassador to NATO, Tomasz Szatkowski, ABW has told PAP.
Szatkowski, who was appointed to the military bloc by the former ruling party, the socially-conservative Law and Justice (PiS), in 2019, was recalled by the new foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, in June. But President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, refuses to acknowledge the change and appoint Sikorski's nominee Jacek Najder to replace Szatkowski.
According to unofficial information published by the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper on Wednesday, Szatkowski is said to have lied three times during his 2018 polygraph examination. According to the newspaper, one of the questions concerned cooperation with foreign intelligence.
Jacek Dobrzynski, spokesperson for the coordinator of security agencies, confirmed to PAP on Thursday that ABW had launched the security check against Szatkowski last week.
He explained that the check was launched due to information that could suggest that a person with access to classified information may not offer a guarantee of keeping classified matters secret.
"Under the law, the examined person's access to classified information has been automatically removed," Dobrzynski said.
Poland's Interior Minister and Coordinator of Security Agencies Tomasz Siemoniak said in May that Szatkowski should have never become Poland's ambassador to NATO and that Duda had already received documents on Szatkowski from one of the country's security agencies.
But Duda said at that time that the documents he had received did not prove Szatkowski did anything wrong. (PAP)
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