After their spectacular arrest in Warsaw’s presidential palace, two convicted grandees of the recently voted out former Polish ruling party PiS have ended up in prison. Ex-Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski and his ex-state secretary Maciej Wasik have been taken to prison, police said on Tuesday evening. Kaminski went on hunger strike on Wednesday.
A group of PiS parliamentarians gathered at night in front of the prison in Warsaw’s Grochow district around party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski. He described Kaminski and Wasik as “political prisoners” and unsuccessfully demanded access to the detention center.
On the brink of a national crisis
The case of the two politicians led to an escalation of the conflict on Tuesday between the new centre-left government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the camp of the national-conservative PiS. Since then, the EU and NATO country Poland has been on the brink of a national crisis.
Confrontation in the presidential palace
President Andrzej Duda, from the PiS, received Kaminski and Wasik at the presidential palace on Tuesday while police were taking them to prison. After several hours in the palace, the PiS politicians were finally arrested there.
Former minister on hunger strike
The former Minister of the Interior announced on Wednesday afternoon that he had gone on hunger strike. He views his conviction as political revenge, Kaminski further said
The affair has haunted Polish politics for years: Duda pardoned the duo after an initial trial in 2015, but the Supreme Court declared the pardon unlawful because the appeal process was still ongoing at the time. Duda emphasized several times that in his opinion the pardon still applies.
Source: Krone
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