Polish justice minister requests lifting of opposition deputy leader’s immunity from prosecution

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Poland’s justice minister Adam Bodnar, who also serves as prosecutor general, has asked parliament to lift the immunity of a deputy leader of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, Mariusz Błaszczak, so that he can face criminal prosecution.

Błaszczak is accused of abusing his authority and disclosing classified information when, while previously serving as defence minister, he published sections of historical military plans during the campaign for the 2023 parliamentary elections. If found guilty, he could be imprisoned for up to five years.

However, he and his PiS colleagues deny wrongdoing and claim that the case against Błaszczak is being pursued for political reasons.

The incident in question took place when PiS was in power and seeking to win a third term at the October 2023 elections.

Less than a month before the elections, Błaszczak publicly revealed military documents that, he said, showed how Civic Platform (PO), then the main opposition party, had planned when it was previously in power to give up half of Poland if Russia invaded.

PO figures condemned his actions at the time, saying that he had threatened state security for the sake of party interests.

PiS went on to lose power at the elections and, in December 2023, a new coalition government led by PO came to power. In July 2024, the head of the Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW) filed a notification to prosecutors about the suspicion that Błaszczak had committed a crime when revealing the documents.

A statement issued today by Anna Adamiak, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor general, revealed that prosecutors working on the case had found that Błaszczak exceeded his authority and had done so “to gain personal benefits for his political group, the Law and Justice party.”

In doing so, he “acted to the detriment of the public interest and caused exceptionally serious damage to Poland, threatening its independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, international position and the cohesion of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO)”, continued the statement.

Among the prosecutors’ findings was that Błasczak had instructed people who were not authorised to view such material to search for it in the military archives. Then, when Błasczak declassified parts of the documents, he failed to obtain permission from the chief of the general staff, as was required.

Later, at the defence ministry’s operations centre, scans of the documents were “graphically developed and a note [saying] ‘Tusk’s government, in the event of war, was ready to give up half of Poland’ was added to them”, noted Adamiak

A film featuring the graphics and Błaszczak was then created at the defence ministry and later published by PiS.

Speaking to reporters separately today, Adamiak said that the sections of the documents Błaszczak declassified were, in any case, selected to “lose the entire context of the strategy”, meaning that “Poles did not actually learn what the plan for the defence strategy of Poland was”.

As Błaszczak is protected by legal immunity as a member of parliament, Bodnar has filed a request for the Sejm, the more powerful lower house, to allow charges to be brought against him. That can be done if a majority of MPs vote in favour.

Błaszczak was, however, immediately defended by his party colleagues, including PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński, who called Bodnar’s decision “a purely political action that has nothing to do with the law”.

Sebastian Kaleta, a fellow PiS MP and former deputy justice minister, noted that Błaszczak had declassified a historical military plan that was no longer in force and doing so, therefore, did not threaten Poland’s security.

Kaleta called the decision to prosecute Błasczak an act of “revenge for the fact that Poles learned the truth that in the event of Russian aggression, millions of Poles would automatically end up under Russian occupation”.

Błaszczak, who currently serves as the head of PiS’s parliamentary caucus, himself also held a press conference this afternoon at which he argued that he had made the decision to declassify the documents to protect Poland’s security, not threaten it.

“I had the right, and even the obligation, to make the public aware of what happened” under the previous PO government, he said, adding that he “would do it again without hesitation”.

Since the current PO-led coalition came to power in 2023, prosecutors have launched cases against a number of members of the former PiS government, accusing them of various abuses of power during their time in office. PiS claims those actions are acts of “political revenge”.

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: MON (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)

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.