Poland’s centre-left government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk has filed charges against former Conservative (PiS) defence minister Antoni Macierewicz and the right-wing presidential candidate Grzegorz Braun MEP.
On July 4, Poland’s justice minister and Prosecutor General, Adam Bodnar, requested that parliament lift the legal immunity of Antoni Macierewicz, a former defence minister (2015-2017) during the lifetime of the last PiS administration.
Macierewicz was to be charged for offences allegedly committed during his time as head of an investigative commission into the 2010 Smolensk air disaster that killed then-president Lech Kaczyński and 95 others.
Bodnar said that Macierewicz was being investigated over 21 alleged criminal acts relating to his time heading the commission, including the alleged unauthorised release of classified documents.
The offences he was alleged to have committed carried prison sentences of between three and five years but for him to be charged parliament must lift his immunity.
That was likely to be a formality since the ruling majority had already removed it for a number of PiS MPs and former government officials including former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki and PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński.
Macierewicz has long claimed that the 2010 Smolensk crash was not a tragic accident, as concluded by Polish and Russian investigations, but that it was caused deliberately, likely by Russia, he said, in an effort to kill Lech Kaczyński.
When the PiS came to power in 2015, it established a commission within the defence ministry to re-investigate the crash headed by defence minister Macierewicz. It produced a report claiming the tragedy was caused by foul play but failed to prove conclusive evidence for that.
Despite Macierewicz and Kaczyński repeatedly claiming over the following eight years that the commission had obtained and would soon reveal proof that the crash was deliberately caused, no conclusive evidence was forthcoming.
Macierewicz was not the only right-wing politician to hear of charges against him on July 4.
Braun, who finished fourth in Poland’s recent presidential election with 6 per cent of the vote, has been charged in relation to four alleged incidents, including his putting out of Hanukkah celebration menorah in the Polish parliament in 2023.
The charges against Braun included allegedly assaulting and insulting a public official, destruction of property, insulting a religious group and object of religious worship, and causing damage to health, all of which carried potential prison sentences.
Another claimed incident was when Braun allegedly disrupted an event at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw held by Jan Grabowski, a Polish-Canadian Holocaust historian.
In relation to that, Braun has been charged with allegedly causing property damage and disturbing the peace. He has been stripped of his European parliamentary immunity to face the charges.
Braun has been hit with another charge of property damage in relation to a further incident in which he allegedly removed a Christmas tree from a courthouse because it was decorated with European Union and LGBT flags.
Finally, he has been charged with allegedly assaulting and insulting a public official during an incident in which Braun entered the National Institute of Cardiology and confronted its director, Łukasz Szumowski, a former PiS health minister. That was allegedly over the latter’s involvement in the introduction of Covid restrictions and the introduction of vaccines.
Braun is also being investigated over a series of incidents during the recent presidential election campaign, including alleged anti-semitic remarks made during a televised election debate, the removal of a Ukrainian and EU flags from public buildings and unauthorised entry into a maternity ward to protest against a doctor who had carried out an abortion in the ninth month of pregnancy.
The Tusk government itself has been accused of breaking the law with the forced takeover of public media and the prosecution service.
On July 6, the portal wPolityce reported that the justice ministry had prepared legislation granting amnesty to all “who had been engaged in the defence of democracy, the rule of law and European law” hoping that following the recent elections, a new president would allow such legislation through.
These plans were scuppered by the victory of the PiS candidate Karol Nawrocki in the June 1 run-off of the presidential ballot.
As president, Nawrocki would also be able to use his power as head of state to pardon those in cases where he considered a miscarriage of justice had occurred.
