Poland’s opposition Conservatives (PiS) have expressed fury with the centre-left government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk over the release from prison of Ryszard Cyba, who was found guilty of murdering a PiS employee in 2010 and received a life sentence.
In a heated exchange in parliament on April 2 the PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński said the move contrasted with what he called the inhumane treatment of PiS-aligned officials being investigated for alleged abuses of power and corruption.
Cyba was released by a court on medical grounds relating to his mental health on March 14, having served 14 years of what was supposed to be a minimum 30 years in prison before he could be considered for parole.
He shot and killed PiS staffer Marek Rosiak and wounded another man when he entered the PiS office in the city of Łódz. He later told police he really wanted to kill the leader of PiS Jarosław Kaczyński but had to target PiS members who were “available”.
Deputy justice minister Maria Ejchart on April 2 would not disclose the whereabouts of Cyba to PiS MPs and Franiszek Sterczewski, an MP from Tusk’s Civic Coalition, taunted the opposition by saying “seek and you shall find”.
Later at a press conference Ejchart admitted that Cyba had been taken from prison directly to a care home with round-the-clock medical supervision.
The justice ministry has pointed out that if Cyba returned to health he would have to serve his remaining prison sentence.
Independent conservative broadcaster TV Republika has reported that Cyba left the psychiatric hospital at the beginning of April and was staying in another care home, while the authorities are only now preparing a court order for him.
That case will be heard on May 8 and aimed to ensure he was placed under electronic surveillance because as things stood legally he was currently at liberty and not under enforced supervision.
The PiS were quick to contrast the way the killer of a staff member was being handled to the way former PiS government officials were treated.
Former deputy justice minister Sebastian Kaleta said that the government clearly felt “the opposition should go to prison and a murderer should go free”. Maciej Wąsik MEP wondered if Cyba’s release was a “part of the government’s plans to reduce Poland’s prison population by 20,000 inmates”.
The matter came to a head during a parliamentary session when PiS leader Kaczyński linked the release of Cyba with what he called “sadism” regarding suspects allied to PiS.
The opposition leader asked for a parliamentary debate on the way the Tusk government was treating such suspects and whether this was consistent with democratic norms.
“What is the relationship between humanitarianism and sadism under the Tusk government?” Kaczyński asked.
“On the one hand, we have a ‘humanitarian decision’ to release a murderer, Ryszard Cyba. On the other we have abuse of women being detained for long periods not being able to care for their children and the death of my colleague Barbara Skrzypek driven by a disgraceful long interrogation even though she was not a suspect,” he said.
He was referring to the fact that a woman who had worked in a senior position for former PiS prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki was being held on suspicion of corruption having had her feet and hands cuffed during the arrest. She was also reportedly being denied the possibility of regular contact with her autistic teenage son who, during the period of her detention, has attempted suicide.
The former Morawiecki aides’ lawyers have reported that the prosecutors have now moved to take her child into protective custody while the child’s mother continued to be detained and questioned about her alleged role in soliciting bribes.
According to Tusk’s attorney and MP Roman Giertych, that situation could “end at once if she had the sense to co-operate and turn state witness revealing who she had taken bribes for”.
Elsewhere, Barbara Skrzypek, a close aide of Kaczyński, was questioned for several hours about what she knew about her boss’s role in the alleged solicitation of bribes from an Austrian developer.
Skrzypek had reportedly asked for the presence of an attorney because she was in poor health but that was denied by the public prosecutor, while lawyers representing the accuser were present.
She died of a heart attack two days after her interrogation.
