A man has been detained following an attempted firebombing of the Warsaw headquarters of the party led by Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
The incident occurred on October 17 and the suspect, who cannot be named under Poland’s privacy laws, was detained on October 20 in eastern Poland. It has been alleged that he had already issued death threats against Tusk earlier this year.
Witnesses reported that a man threw a Molotov cocktail at the office entrance of the Civic Coalition (KO) party building and shouted anti-government slogans before fleeing the scene.
Police said the device failed to ignite and a bystander from a nearby café intervened, preventing it from catching fire. No one was injured.
Investigators said the suspect had previously been detained in May for allegedly posting death threats against Tusk on X, a case that was referred to court in June and remains ongoing.
The authorities did not comment on why the man who had allegedly issued the death threats against Tusk was allowed to walk the streets after having been indicted over the offence.
Tusk commented on the arrest in a post on X: “In June, he was charged with threatening to kill me; in October, he tried to set fire to my party’s headquarters and linked the incident to rhetoric at a recent opposition rally.”
He was referring to the remarks made during a rally in protest at illegal immigration. There an activist from the Border Defence Movement (ROG), Robert Bąkiewicz, had called for the “pulling out of weeds” and “napalming the ground left” during an opposition Conservatives (PiS) rally in Warsaw on October 11.
Bąkiewicz was talking about removing illegal migrants rather than political opponents but politicians from Tusk’s ruling Civic Coalition were quick to seize on those remarks as an incitement to hatred and prosecutors are reported to be investigating the comments.
Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister responsible for co-ordinating Polish security services, responded to news of the attempted firebombing and the arrest of a suspect by pointing to the opposition, telling government-controlled broadcaster Radio Trójka that “he who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind”.
Justice minister Waldemar Żurek on the same station openly accused Bąkiewicz of “political responsibility” for the attempted firebombing.
As political polarisation in Poland has grown over the past two decades there have been incidents of violence against politicians on both sides of the divide.
Opposition PiS MPs have had their offices damaged with windows broken and slogans sprayed on doors. The leader of the party, Jarosław Kaczyński, has had death threats made against him regularly.
In 2010, a PiS parliamentary office in the city of Łódz, central Poland was attacked by a man who killed one of the staff working there and wounded another. He later told police he had wanted to kill Kaczyński but could not reach him.
Another fatality occurred in 2019 when Gdańsk mayor Paweł Adamowicz was stabbed on stage during a charity event. The assailant blamed Tusk’s party for having sent him to jail. The killer was not aware of the fact that Adamowicz was actually in conflict with Tusk’s party and had in the 2018 local elections stood as an independent.
There have also been allegations made of involvement of Polish security services in political violence.
In 2013 a sentry box outside the Russian embassy was burned down during the annual independence march. In discovered tapes of conversations between Tusk government officials, it was suggested the incident was a provocation by the security police designed to discredit the right-wing march.
