Poland Hints of a Contract From the Top

As Waldemar Chmielewski, a former lieutenant of the Polish secret police, stood up in the defendants’ box, a nervous tic on the right side of his face caused his dark mustache to twitch uncontrollably. Chmielewski and three other members of the security forces went on trial two weeks ago in the city of Toruan, 100 miles northwest of Warsaw. They have been charged in last October’s abduction and murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, a militant supporter of the banned Solidarity trade-union movement. It was Chmielewski’s turn to testify last week, and the thought that his life might be hanging in the balance seemed to weigh heavily upon him. His words came out in such a stuttered staccato that one of the five presiding judges in the tiny courtroom grew impatient and interrupted him. “Were you born with the stammer?” the judge asked harshly. “No,” Chmielewski replied. “It started after the Popieluszko case.”

The spectacle of a secret-police officer being called to account for crimes against a dissident priest was a unique event in a Soviet-bloc country. But as the courtroom drama unfolded, questions remained about just how far the government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski was prepared to go if testimony implicates high officials in the regime. Said a skeptical former activist for Solidarity: “Those who really put Father Popieluszko to death will not sit on the defendants’ bench.”

All of the accused men have been reduced to the rank of private, including the kidnapers’ confessed ringleader, Grzegorz Piotrowski, a former captain. Chmielewski supported previous testimony by his co-defendant, Leszek Pekala, that Piotrowski had summoned them to discuss taking “actions to frighten Father Popieluszko.” Chmielewski said that after he raised questions about whether the priest, who had a weak heart, could survive such harsh treatment, Piotrowski consulted with his superior, Adam Pietruszka, a former colonel and the fourth man in the dock, about what to do if Popieluszko died. Later, Piotrowski explained that it had taken some time for the colonel to go “to the top” for approval. Chmielewski told the court that “by the top, I understood one of the department directors of the Interior Ministry or a deputy minister.” Chmielewski claimed that Piotrowski told him after the murder that they had no reason to fear the investigating commission set up in the Interior Ministry. Piotrowski said that it would be made up of the “right people” and mentioned General Zenon Platek, director of the religious affairs department, and secret-police colonel Zbigniew Jablonski.

In almost three days of rambling testimony, Pekala had also explained how Piotrowski had been able to “create an atmosphere to make me sure that one of the deputy ministers knew all about it.” Pekala gave his own version of the kidnaping attempt and told how Popieluszko had banged repeatedly against the trunk of the car into which he had been thrown, bound and gagged. According to Pekala, the priest briefly escaped and ran across a deserted hotel parking lot, yelling, “Help me, help me. Spare my life, you people.” No one heard him, and he was quickly recaptured. Pekala testified that he felt “cheated” at having to shoulder the blame for a crime he was ordered to commit. Said Pekala: “I know now that there is no aim so high to justify the killing of a man.”

Chmielewski also presented himself as a compassionate kidnaper, who had tried to restrain the others. The conspirators, he said, had originally planned to abduct the priest, force him to drink a liter of vodka and then abandon him in a drunken state in some embarrassing place. Knowing that Popieluszko was afraid of water, they had checked several bridges near Warsaw where they could threaten the priest with drowning. His body was finally recovered from a reservoir 85 miles north of the city. After one bungled attempt to force Popieluszko’s car off the road by throwing a rock at the windshield, Chmielewski said that he had posed as a traffic cop and waved the priest’s chauffeur to the side of the road.

Tears welled up in Chmielewski’s eyes as he described in detail how the priest was beaten. He claimed that he had no stomach for the job and had set about switching the license plates of the car. But the sound of the cudgel as it struck the priest was so sickening that he forgot to change the front plate. Said Chmielewski: “The whole event was so horrible that no reasonable man could go on living with it on his conscience.” During most of Chmielewski’s testimony, Piotrowski stared fixedly from the dock out at the courtroom. But as Chmielewski described how on two occasions he and Pekala had pleaded with Piotrowski to let the priest go, only to be told to “keep driving,” the tough ex-captain buried his face in his hands.

While the nation watched and waited for the outcome of the trial, a movement was growing to propose Popieluszko for beatification, the first step toward sainthood in the Roman Catholic Church. More than 20,000 Poles filled the streets outside St. Stanislaw Kostka Church in Warsaw early last week for the monthly Mass for the fatherland, a tradition begun by Popieluszko when he worked in the parish. In the churchyard was a grisly reminder of the crime: a nativity scene in which the Christ child was sheltered inside the open trunk of the same model of car in which Popieluszko was driven to his death.