Palace Of Justice
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Polish Government's Bizarre Trial Of Poland's Former Interior Minister By Press
Warsaw, Poland 3 September, 2007 On Friday night at 10 pm a Polish prosecutor held a 2 hour press conference and detailed evidence against Poland's former Minister of Interior who was taken into custody on charges of obstructing justice and giving false testimony. After effectively damaging the Minister's credibility, he was released.
The Government has been under pressure to allow an investigation into a sabotaged attempt to entrap Former Minister of Agriculture Andrzej Lepper in a land rezoning scheme. In its attempt to avoid an investigation that might show it violated the law itself, it has been trying to refocus the issue on who was disloyal to the Government and sabotaged the attempt by leaking information that lead to Lepper avoiding the trap.
Former Minister of Interior Janusz Kaczmarek was removed from office after having been accused of being the source of the leak. Denying that he leaked information, he is aggressively fighting back by testifying behind closed doors in what is supposed to be secret testimony about Government intrigue and abuse of power.
Leaks of the secret testimony have put the Government in bad light so it in turn has been aggressive in its defense.
The day before Kaczmarek colleague former Chief of Police Korniatowski was to testify before the Parliament Secret Services Committee, Kaczmarek, Korniatowski, Netzel and Krauze were ordered arrested. Krauze, being on vacation, avoided detention but the other three were taken into custody and questioned.
The arrests prevented Korniatowski from testifying before the Secret Services Committee as he was scheduled to on Friday.
They were released on Friday evening.
And on Friday at 10 pm, the prosecutor put on what Andrzej Lepper called a spectacle without facts.
The prosecutor, described by journalists as emotional and politically involved, showed films of Kaczmarek not going to a meeting that he said he had gone to but rather meeting with Krauze. He also played bits of recorded phone conversations in which the suspects were heard using coded language.
He did not show any motive for Kaczmarek's behavior and he did not show Kaczmarek passing information about the pending action against Lepper. Polish Government Fails To Show Motive As Poland's Watergate Scandal Continues
But Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his brother President Lech Kaczynski, as well as members of the Prime Minister's party, have been using the media heavily to spin the prosecutor's presentation to destroy Kaczmarek.
The Prime Minister went so far as to say that based on the evidence it can be assumed that Kaczmarek was the leaker. And the evidence presented shows that he is guilty of crimes.
That thrust of the Government spin is because he, according to the materials shown by the prosecutor, did not attend a meeting he said he had, he has no credibility and, by extension, anything he says cannot be believed.
Kaczmarek said on Saturday after his release that the arrests were made to silence critics of the Government.
Rumors were that Kaczmarek was to be arrested. LPR leader Roman Giertych even flew to Italy where Kaczmarek was vacationing so that he could talk to him before he came back to Poland. Giertych knew Kaczmarek would be arrested and Kaczmarek likely knew as well.
Kaczmarek came back to Poland in spite of knowing he was likely to be detained. And at all times he was available to be questioned by the prosecutor.
That there was a need to stage an early morning raid by armed men in black to detain a man who has made himself readily available, and then releasing him very quickly, seems questionable, if not bizarre, unless it was done as a political maneuver.
Ryszard Krauze, the fifth richest man in Poland, who controls Poland's largest software company, Prokom, and Jaromir Netzel who was the CEO of Poland's largest insurance carrier PZU until he was sacked after being accused of involvement, had not come up in Kaczmarek's leaked testimony and were not blemished by this affair. But now as a result of heavy media coverage they have been effectively tied, whether right or wrong, to some sinister activities by the Government's media campaign, the prosecutor's presentation of "half truths" and "assumption" that Kaczmarek was the leaker.
And the trial by press will continue. Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro announced at a Saturday press conference "There will come a time to reveal new facts and evidence. I think that they will make a similar impression to those you have seen yesterday."
So it seems that trials by the press will be the norm as the Government will continue to use the press to make "similar impression(s)" as it moves against its enemies.
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