A squad of three policemen, including the deputy chief of city police, have detained a pensioner after raiding her home because of a social media message, it has been reported on February 7 in news portal wp.pl.
The raid, made without a warrant, came following an investigation that allegedly found Izabella Majewska, 66, had posted a highly critical social media message directed at the pro-Donald Tusk head of one of Poland’s well-known charities, the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity (WOŚP).
Majewska is now being investigated for a crime for which she could be jailed for up to three years.
The news outlet said the pensioner, reported to be suffering from cancer and who lives on the minimum €200 monthly pension in a flat in the city of Toruń, heard a knock at 6 am on January 15 and found a group of officers demanding entry.
The head of the charity is Jerzy Owsiak, who founded and leads the WOŚP. Each year it collects millions of euros for Poland’s health service.
Owsiak has become controversial because of his public support for now-Prime Minister Donald Tusk during the 2023 parliamentary elections.
He has also refused to answer questions about the way he has disbursed and accounted for the funding his charity has raised, including the money it received to aid the victims of the 2024 floods in Southwestern Poland.
Owsiak has claimed he received death threats indirectly inspired by what he called a “hate campaign” by Conservative media such as TV Republika and wPolsce24.
In January, he told corporate sponsors of his charity he would stop working with those who persisted in advertising on TV Republika, Poland’s most popular news channel.
Several advertisers, including German supermarket chain Lidl, have decided to stop advertising on that channel unless it settled its dispute with Owsiak.
The police have investigated the alleged death threats and in doing so unearthed the post published by Majewska on Facebook, January 12, according to wp.pl.
In it, she apparently cursed Owsiak stating: “You should perish as fast as possible as I have had enough of your thieving and making money out of the naivety of Polese, your foreign and domestic mansions, your kids educated abroad and your and your wife’s high salary. Enough, you should account for all of that and change your glasses because they are what LGBP wear.” Owsiak is known for his large, pink glasses.
The post did not constitute a threat to kill Owsiak nor any suggestion that someone else should do so, according to the wp.pl report. Moreover, it said, Owsiak was never interviewed by police as to whether he saw the post as a death threat. It stated that he police were, therefore, acting on their own behalf, although his attorneys had consented to the police action.
The wp.pl also reported details of how the police detained the pensioner. Her home was, it said, visited by three officers including the deputy chief of Toruń city police. They were reportedly acting on the initiative of the Central Bureau for Cybercrime, which adjudged Majewska’s post to constitute a threat and therefore she was to be investigated for a crime for which she could be jailed for up to three years.
Majewska was detained, her apartment was searched – despite the fact that the police did not have a search warrant – and a smartphone confiscated, according to wp.pl. It said the police reported that she had published several other posts critical of Owsiak as well as the post the cybercrime unit had flagged.
At the police station she was taken to, Majewska was charged with making death threats and inciting others to kill Owsiak, despite testifying that she had neither the means nor the intention to hurt him and simply wanted him to account for his charity’s finances, wp.pl reported.
The public prosecutor who arrived at the police station retrospectively decided to legalise the search of Majewska’s property on the grounds of “an emergency case”, the news portal said.
The prosecutor, it added, ordered Majewska to be placed under police supervision with a duty to report three times a week, a gagging order on talking about the case in public and was bailed for €75.
Majewska was said to have breached the conditions for her release when she talked to TV Republika soon after being released. Despite that, the high publicity the case has generated and the fact that it is now being handled by a group of Conservative lawyers from the think-tank Ordo Iuris no further action has been taken against her, wp.pl reported.
The local prosecutors in Toruń told wp.pl the case against her was currently being assessed and that they would not commit further on whether they would instruct the prosecution service to take the matter to court.
