Poland Evading Truth

He had amassed 17 volumes of evidence, 79 exhibits, 17 videocassettes and 13 tape recordings. But after 22 days of testimony, State Prosecutor Leszek Pietrasinski was no closer to providing the answer to the question that troubles many Poles about the trial in the Torun courtroom: Who really ordered Father Jerzy Popieluszko’s death? The trial entered its final days last week as Pietrasinski gave his summation in the trial of the four secret-police officers charged in the abduction and murder of Popieluszko. The bespectacled prosecutor unleashed an almost theatrical fury upon the confessed leader of the priest’s killers, former Secret Police Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski. Said Pietrasinski: “Piotrowski is a cold and ruthless murderer, a rascal who used the confidence of his subordinates for a hideous crime.”

Pietrasinski demanded that the ex-captain be put to death by hanging. It was the first time that any Communist state had publicly called for the execution of one of its secret policemen for a crime committed ostensibly in the line of duty. The courtroom was still. Piotrowski raised his eyes, his Adam’s apple working convulsively.

The prosecutor recommended that each of Piotrowski’s partners, Co-Defendants Waldemar Chmielewski and Leszek Pekala, receive a sentence of 25 years, the maximum term under Polish law. The men, he said, were following the orders of their superior. The prosecutor also recommended a sentence of 25 years for the fourth defendant, ex-Colonel Adam Pietruszka, who took no physical part in the crime but is accused of having encouraged Piotrowski in its commission. The prosecutor’s recommendations are expected to be approved by Presiding Judge Artur Kujawa and his four co-jurists this week.

Pietrasinski also made a scathing indictment of Popieluszko and the Roman Catholic Church. Said he: “Father Popieluszko was filled with hatred for socialist Poland. . . . They (the defendants) were extremists just as he (Popieluszko) was an extremist. Thus two extremist attitudes met.” Pietrasinski added with subtle cynicism that the aim of the four secret policemen was to discredit Poland’s Communist regime. Said he: “They used military uniforms and the financial reserves of the Interior Ministry as if to confirm that terror is being used in Poland. It is known that the kidnaping caused a great resonance. The defendants’ act carries all the traits of a political provocation.”

The comparison between the four defendants and the activist priest incensed auxiliary prosecutors who represent Popieluszko’s family and his driver, Waldemar Chrostowski. In his concluding remarks the following day, Edward Wende, the slain priest’s longtime attorney, who is representing Popieluszko’s brother and the driver, struck back. “I did not think,” he said, “that I would be forced to take the stand in the role of defender of the victim. Such a statement by the public prosecutor, which would equate the victim with the hangman without any reason for it, is probably unknown in any court records.”

Wende’s colleague, Lawyer Jan Olszewski, was equally dismayed at the prosecution’s failure to find the real instigator of the crime. In a veiled reference to the Soviet Union, Olszewski declared, “This corpse, this blood, was supposed to release a spiral of mutual terror. Who could have had an interest in it? Every child who studies history knows in whose interest Poland’s weakness is.”