Polish nationalists sentenced over public “hanging” of opposition politicians

Two men have been found guilty of making unlawful threats during a stunt they organised in which photos of opposition politicians were subjected to a mock public hanging. The incident in question happened almost six years ago, but the case has dragged on after prosecutors twice discontinued their investigation.

The event was organised in Katowice by three far-right groups, National Radical Camp (ONR), All-Polish Youth (Młodzież Wszechpolska) and the National Movement (Ruch Narodowy), who are also the main organisers of Poland’s largest annual nationalist event, the Independence March in Warsaw.

They staged a mock hanging of photos of six opposition members of the European Parliament –  Danuta Jazłowiecka, Danuta Hübner, Barbara Kudrycka, Julia Pitera, Róża Thun and Michał Boni – who had recently voted for a resolution that criticised the Polish government’s judicial reforms and the “xenophobic and fascist” Independence March.

The staging of the event was a reference to an 18th-century painting, Hanging of traitors in effigie, that depicts the symbolic hanging of supporters of the Targowica Confederation, a group of Polish nobles who had allied with Russia against the Polish national cause.

Hanging of traitors in effigie (1796), Jean-Pierre Norblin de La Gourdaine.

Although prosecutors – who are under the authority of Zbigniew Ziobro, who is both public prosecutor general and also justice minister in Poland’s national-conservative government – investigated the case, they twice decided to discontinue proceedings after deeming no crime had occurred.

However, one of the politicians targeted in the stunt, Thun, used a power known as a subsidiary indictment to bring the case directly to court.

Yesterday, the district court in Kraków, which was assigned the case, found the two organisers of the event – both leaders of the Silesian branch of the National Movement, who can be named only as Jerzy J. and Jacek L. under Polish privacy law – guilty of making unlawful threats due to a person’s political affiliation.

That crime can carry a prison sentence of up to five years in prison, but the pair were instead fined 9,000 zloty (€1,943) each and ordered to pay the costs of the trial. They can appeal the ruling.

“In their statements, [the defendants] referred not only to their critical assessment of the MEPs’ behaviour as traitors, but also to the consequences that may befall them…that is, the public performance of the death penalty,” said judge Agnieszka Senisson in her justification of the verdict.

“Such a means of criticism aimed at inducing fear in the politicians by means of death threats definitely goes beyond the exercise of the constitutional right to freedom of speech,” she added.

While it convicted the organisers, the court acquitted five further people who had participated in the event, finding that their actions “fell within the scope of freedom of expression”, said Senisson.

Main image credit: Ruch Narodowy/Twitter

Daniel Tilles

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.