Polish general dismissed from NATO HQ following “request from allies”
Poland’s defence ministry has confirmed that a Polish general is being dismissed from NATO’s headquarters at the “request of allies”. It follows a media report that he showed bias in recruitment and was accused of homophobic and racist behaviour.
On Saturday, the spokesman for Poland’s defence ministry, Janusz Sejmej, issued a statement announcing that Brigadier General Artur Jakubczyk was subject to a “procedure for dismissal from the International Military Staff at NATO headquarters”.
The International Military Staff (IMS) is the executive body of the Military Committee (MC), NATO’s senior military authority, based at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.
Sejmej confirmed that Jakubczyk was facing dismissal “following the request of allies” and added that, “unfortunately, this is another terrible personnel decision by our predecessors”. Jakubczyk was appointed to his position at NATO under the former Law and Justice (PiS) government.
Informuję, że po wniosku sojuszników trwa procedura odwołania gen. bryg. A. Jakubczyka z Międzynarodowego Sztabu Wojskowego w Kwaterze Głównej NATO. To niestety kolejna fatalna decyzja kadrowa naszych poprzedników.
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Rzecznik prasowy MON
Janusz Sejmej
— Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej 🇵🇱 (@MON_GOV_PL) August 3, 2024
The defence ministry has not provided any details of the reasons behind Jakubczyk’s dismissal. However, Sejmej’s statement followed a report earlier on Saturday by Rzeczpospolita, a leading Polish newspaper, saying that the general was “returning to Poland in an atmosphere of scandal”.
The newspaper said it had established that Jakubczyk was being dismissed due to “irregularities in the competition for the head of the intelligence policy department” at NATO’s headquarters. The general “allegedly favoured one of the candidates, who is from Poland”.
“An additional accusation is that his behaviour was described as homophobic and racist,” added Rzeczpospolita, without providing any further details.
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The newspaper notes that Jakubczyk previously served as a deputy commander to another Polish general, Jarosław Gromadziński, who in March was withdrawn as commander of Eurocorps, a joint military group of some EU and NATO states, after an investigation into him was launched by the Military Counterintelligence Service.
Rzeczpospolita reports that, in the case of Gromadziński, “officers from allied countries complained that the Polish military does not observe elementary rules of culture”. Like Jakubczyk, Gromadziński was appointed to the NATO position under the former PiS government.
Recent months have also seen a dispute over Poland’s ambassador to NATO, Tomasz Szatkowski, also a PiS appointee. The current government sought to remove him, with Prime Minister Donald Tusk claiming that Szatkowski was suspected by the intelligence services of various offences.
Prime minister @donaldtusk has claimed that Poland’s ambassador to NATO served until this year despite being suspected by the intelligence services of offences including improper handling of classified documents and contact with foreign security services https://t.co/kbgzL2TkK7
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) July 13, 2024
Main image credit: MON (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.
