Poland in the Dock

As a helicopter hovered overhead, dozens of policemen set up barricades, blocking the approaches to the yellow brick courthouse on Piekarska Street in the provincial city of Torun, 100 miles northwest of Warsaw. The strict security precautions seemed grimly ironic, considering the fact that the four men who were brought to trial in handcuffs last week were, like the policemen outside, employees of the Ministry of the Interior. The four, all secret policemen, are charged in the plot to abduct and murder Father Jerzy Popieluszko, 37, a Roman Catholic priest who was an outspoken supporter of the banned Solidarity trade union. His bound and beaten body was discovered last October in a reservoir 85 miles north of Warsaw.

The killing shocked fervently religious Poland and gave a measure of new life to the faltering opposition movement. It has also proved a major embarrassment for the government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who publicly vowed to do everything possible to get to the bottom of the crime. Last week the government presented its case in court.

According to the indictment, Secret Police Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, 33, the suspected ringleader, allegedly recruited two lieutenants from the security forces, Leszek Pekala, 32, and Waldemar Chmielewski, 29, to silence Popieluszko. The officers believed that they would be protected by their superiors. Pekala claimed in court that “one of the deputy ministers–I do not know which one–spoke of interrupting Popieluszko’s activities.” The action, he said, was “to take place outside the law.” The prosecution named Secret Police Colonel Adam Pietruszka, 47, as the man who gave the orders; he pleaded innocent to the accusation that he aided and abetted the murder. Like the three others, who have pleaded guilty to charges of abduction and murder, Pietruszka faces a penalty ranging from a minimum of eight years in prison to the death sentence.

The conspirators apparently devised three different plans against Popieluszko, ranging from harassment and torture to murder. Pekala also revealed that the priest almost escaped his captors when they stopped in a hotel parking lot.

In a conciliatory move aimed at squelching suspicions of a possible official cover-up, the authorities have allowed two priests, representing the episcopate of the Roman Catholic Church, to “observe” the case. They will listen along with the state prosecutors to the testimony of more than 20 witnesses after a brief year-end recess.