2024-01-09 21:22 update: 2024-01-12, 15:10
Fot. PAP/Marcin Obara
Two senior politicians of the former ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), convicted of abuse of power, have been detained by police at the Presidential Palace, a deputy interior minister has said.
Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wasik were seized by police officers "in accordance with the court's order," Czeslaw Mroczek confirmed.
Earlier, media reported unofficially that the police entered the Presidential Palace and arrested Kaminski and Wasik.
"Everyone is equal before the law," Marcin Kierwinski, the interior minister, wrote in a comment.
Minutes later, Warsaw police said in a post on the X platform: "We would like to inform you that in accordance with the court order, the persons covered by the instructions were detained."
The two were at the palace owing to an invitation by President Andrzej Duda to attend a ceremony for the appointment of new presidential advisers.
As they were on their way to the palace Warsaw police entered their homes.
The capital's police had earlier confirmed that they had received documents from the court ordering them to arrest both politicians.
After the ceremony, held at 11am, Kaminski and Wasik made a statement to the media in front of the Presidential Palace.
"We are not hiding. At the moment we are staying with the President of the Republic of Poland until evil is defeated," Kaminski told reporters and he and Wasik returned to the Presidential Palace where they remained until the time of their arrest.
Commenting on the situation later in the day, Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, said that in the case of the two convicted MPs, "the president joined the actions organised by the PiS leader (Jaroslaw Kaczynski - PAP) which are aimed at the foundations of the Polish state."
"He must stop this spectacle, which is leading to a very dangerous situation," Tusk said.
"This is an unbelievable situation, one that is not in the textbooks... Those convicted by a final judgment are to be taken to the place of solitary confinement, but they choose another place of isolation, probably more comfortable, which is the Presidential Palace," he added.
The prime minister cited Article 239 of the Polish Penal Code which states that "obstructing or frustrating criminal proceedings by helping the perpetrator of a crime" can face up to five years in prison, if found guilty.
According to Tusk: "This is obvious abuse of a situation in which no one will use force against an institution such as the President of the Republic of Poland.
"The real problem, unfortunately, is that today, President Andrzej Duda and the entire political camp that had ruled Poland for eight years and lost have led to such unprecedented legal chaos. To put it bluntly, today we are dealing with an attempt to build a dual power, and with the involvement of the most important state institutions. This is obvious sabotage," Tusk warned.
The attempted arrests come as the latest twist in a protracted and complicated legal drama involving the two politicians that has caused divisions within the judicial system.
It has also led to a political battle outside the courts with the government supporting their prosecution while the opposition has leapt to their defence, claiming the case is political.
In December 2023, Kaminski, the former interior minister, and Wasik, his deputy were sentenced to two years in prison for masterminding an anti-corruption provocation in 2007 when they were heading the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA).
Back in March 2015 Kaminski and Wasik had already been sentenced to three years in prison in the same case but in November, 2015, Duda pardoned them.
But later in June, 2023, following the Supreme Court's decision, the case returned to the docket after more than eight years.
The December 2023 ruling, issued by Warsaw's Regional Court of the second instance, is final.
But on Monday, Duda told the lower house speaker, Szymon Holownia, that his pardon of Kaminski and Wasik remains in place and that their parliamentary mandates must also be respected.
Holownia replied that the recent judgment of the district court in this case is clear and entails appropriate consequences.
On Tuesday morning, Warsaw police received an order issued by a Warsaw court to take the two former PIS MPs into custody. (PAP)
mr/md/jch
