Convicted MPs Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wąsik were detained on Tuesday 9 January at around 7pm on the premises of the Presidential Palace, where they had been since the early hours of the morning. They were then taken to police headquarters in Warsaw’s Praga-Południe district. Shortly after 10pm they were taken into custody. “President Andrzej Duda announced that he would write to the heads of states and international institutions informing them that there had been a violation of Polish law”, his chancellery chief Grażyna Ignaczak-Bandych reported.

Presidential officials reported that police entered the Presidential Palace when Andrzej Duda was at his second official residence in Warsaw, the Belvedere, for a meeting with exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya.

Commenting on the detention, Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski wrote that “everyone is equal before the law”.

In 2015, a few weeks after Law and Justice (PiS) took power, President Duda, pardoned Kaminski and Wąsik after they had been convicted by a court of first instance for exceeding their powers and abusing their authority. In Poland, a debate has started over whether the president could pardon Kaminski and Wąsik, before the second instance court issued its final verdict. The Supreme Court ruled last year that the case should be reopened and Mariusz Kaminski, former Interior Ministry chief, and Maciej Wąsik his deputy were sentenced to two years in prison in December 2023.

On the evening of 9 January, some Law and Justice (PiS) MPs, led by party president Jaroslaw Kaczynski, turned up in front of the police station in Warsaw’s Praga district, where the detainees were taken, and later went in front of the detention building in Grochów, where Maciej Wąsik and Mariusz Kaminski were incarcerated.

According to Kaczynski, the 2015 pardon is effective and therefore there is no need for the president to pardon Kaminski and Wąsik again. A different opinion is held by a large part of the legal community, which points out that the police were only implementing the orders of the court that validly sentenced the two politicians.

Adrian Andrzejewski