Justice minister sues ex-PM for saying he had “blood on his hands” over soldier killed by migrant

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland’s justice minister and prosecutor general, Adam Bodnar, is suing former prime minister and opposition politician Mateusz Morawiecki for claiming that Bodnar has “blood on his hands” over the death of a Polish soldier who was stabbed by a migrant seeking to cross the border from Belarus.

Bodnar is demanding that Morawiecki and his Law and Justice (PiS) party publish a public apology for defaming him and that the former prime minister make a donation to charity, Bodnar’s lawyers told the Rzeczpospolita newspaper.

Minister sprawiedliwości Adam Bodnar złożył pozew przeciwko byłemu premierowi, Mateuszowi Morawieckiemu.https://t.co/0UbSh6MyXK

— Rzeczpospolita Prawo (@RPPrawo) October 28, 2024

“Mateusz Morawiecki stated that Adam Bodnar ‘has blood on his hands’,” said Michał Zacharski and Kamil Rudol, noting that they had today filed a lawsuit on behalf of Bodnar at the district court in Warsaw.

“There can be no tolerance for proclaiming such radical theses without a shred of evidence, regardless of whether the person whose actions are being criticized is a politician or not,” added the lawyers. “There is no consent to suggestions that Adam Bodnar is responsible for the death of a person.”

“With the lawsuit filed on behalf of Adam Bodnar, we are also fighting for good standards of public discourse,” they added.

 

In June, Mateusz Sitek, one of thousands of soldiers who have been sent to reinforce the border with Belarus amid a surge in attempted crossings by migrants and asylum seekers – who are mainly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – died after being stabbed while preventing one such crossing.

On the day of Sitek’s death, Morawiecki – who served as prime minister from 2017 to 2023 – held a press conference near the border at which he thanked soldiers and other border officers “for your courageous attitude, for not hesitating to defend us, our borders, despite what the current government is doing”.

The former prime minister’s last comment referred to prosecutors’ decision to establish an investigative team to “criminally assess evidence regarding the conduct of officers towards foreigners who crossed the Belarusian-Polish”.

“Prosecutor Bodnar, who has blood on his hands from what happened, has appointed a team…to catch behaviour from soldiers that can lead to their arrest,” said Morawiecki. “I really wonder who all this serves.”

Morawiecki: Prokurator Bodnar ma krew na rękach#300POLITYKALIVE https://t.co/mMrHI8FDOO

— 300Polityka (@300polityka) June 6, 2024

Members of the right-wing opposition argued that such actions – including the charging of two soldiers who had fired warning shots at a group of migrants – made officers afraid to properly defend the border, which in turn made a tragedy such as Sitek’s more likely.

Bodnar himself, however, has previously denied this, saying that the work of the investigative team “did not result in any factual or legal restrictions for uniformed services or soldiers in connection with the protection of the border” and has “no connection to the death of any soldier”.

Now, Bodnar’s lawyers argue that Morawiecki’s remarks unjustly harmed the reputation of their client by suggesting that he was responsible for Sitek’s death.

The president has signed into law new rules removing criminal liability from officers who use firearms while serving on the border.

The measures were passed in response to a surge in aggression from some migrants seeking to cross the border from Belarus https://t.co/sBMaoYhoCw

— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 16, 2024

They want a court to order Morawiecki to publish a statement in which he would apologise for “violating the honour and good name of Adam Bodnar in a grossly unlawful manner”.

The apology would be published on Morawiecki’s social media accounts as well as on the website and X profile of the PiS party. They also want Morawiecki to pay 10,000 zloty (€2,300) to the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity (WOŚP), Poland’s largest annual charity fundraiser.

At the time of writing, neither Morawiecki nor Bodnar had commented publicly on the lawsuit. In Poland’s legal system, suing over defamation is a fairly common practice, including between opposing politicians.

In late July, deputy defence minister Stanisław Wziątek confirmed that prosecutors investigating Sitek’s murder had identified a perpetrator, but added the details of the case remained confidential.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: KPRM and MS (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.