Polish police detained the countryʼs former Minister of Internal Affairs (MIA) Mariusz Kaminski and his deputy Maciej Wonszyk, as RMF24 reports. The politicians were surprised, but did not resist.
It happened on the evening of January 9 at the presidential palace in Warsaw, where politicians arrived for the ceremony of appointing the presidentʼs advisers — they were invited by Polish leader Andrzej Duda.
The president himself was not at the residence at the time of the arrest, he went to the Belvedere Palace for a meeting with the leader of the Belarusian opposition Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and was going to talk with politicians afterwards.
Police say they detained the politicians in accordance with a court order issued on January 8.
The office of the President of Poland noted that the detention of the Presidentʼs guests offended the dignity of the Polish state. After the arrest of the politicians, a protest was held near the presidential palace, where about 300 people gathered.
- In 2015, a Warsaw court sentenced Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wonszyk to three years in prison on charges of abuse of power in the so-called 2007 land case. At that time, Kamiński headed the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau of Poland and tried to prove the involvement of government officials in paying bribes for assistance in land transactions. In the same year, Polish President Andrzej Duda pardoned Kamiński and Wonszyk. However, in 2023, the Supreme Court overturned the decision and sent the case for a new trial. At the end of December, the court sentenced the politicians to two years in prison. They were also stripped of their seats in the Polish Diet from the "Law and Justice" party.
- In the governments of PIS-LPR-Samoobrona 2015-2023, Kamiński was the Minister of Internal Affairs, and Wonszyk was the Deputy Minister in this Ministry. They are considered as one of the implementers of illegal eavesdropping by the Pegasus programming of the opposition for political purposes.