Poland’s opposition Conservative (PiS)-aligned President Andrzej Duda has pardoned Robert Bąkiewicz, leader of the Border Defence Movement (ROG), from having to serve community service.
That was for an offence committed against a pro-abortion protester back in 2020 but he will still have to pay fines he incurred.
The pardon confirmed on July 15 by the office of the public prosecutor was for Bąkiewicz’s conviction of involvement in alleged “hooliganism” regarding a prominent protester for women’s and LGBT rights and activist Katarzyna Augustynek, widely known by the nickname of “Grandma Kate” because of her advanced age.
The incident in question took place in October 2020 during mass protests against the tightening of abortion legislation, many of which took place outside churches.
Bąkiewicz, the main organiser of the annual Independence Day March in Warsaw, formed a self-defence guard for Catholic churches to protect them from radical leftist demonstrators
In one incident during the pro-abortion protests at Warsaw’s Holy Cross Church, Bąkiewicz grabbed a rainbow-coloured scarf Augustynek was wearing and, it was alleged, he then encouraged others to drag her down the church stairs.
Augustynek herself has had run-ins with the law for her actions during protests and in 2023, she was found guilty of attacking a policeman and fined of approximately €200.
In March 2023, Bąkiewicz was sentenced to a year of community service and ordered to pay €2,500 compensation to Augustynek after she brought a private indictment against him for physical assault.
Bąkiewicz unsuccessfully appealed the ruling but the then PiS justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro initiated proceedings for a pardon and suspended the execution of the sentence.
Adam Bodnar the public prosecutor and justice minister in the present centre-left government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk in early July announced that he had decided to revoke Ziobro’s decision to suspend the execution of the sentence. That prompted Duda to decide to pardon Bąkiewicz from the community service part of the sentence but not the €2,500 fine.
Bąkiewicz unsuccessfully contested a parliamentary election in Central Poland during the 2023 general election and has in the last few weeks set up and run the ROG, an organisation that now claims to have more than 7,000 active members patrolling Poland’s frontier with Germany.
In 2023, on request from justice minister Ziobro, Duda pardoned the nationalist activist Marika Matuszak who was serving a jail sentence for participation in an unsuccessful attempt to snatch rainbow-coloured flag from a female LGBT demonstrator.
In 2024 Duda pardoned two former PiS government interior ministers, Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik, who had been convicted and jailed for exceeding their powers in an anti-corruption sting operation back in 2007.
PIS-aligned president-elect Karol Nawrocki, who beat the Tusk government’s candidate Rafał Trzaskowski in the second round run-off of June 1, has been non-committal on whether he would be pardoning in “political” cases.
He has, though, criticised the Tusk government for allegedly persecuting former PiS government officials.
A Polish president’s power of clemency is absolute and discretionary. Past presidents have been criticised for being willing to pardon political allies.
