Keep our news free from ads and paywalls by making a donation to support our work!
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.
Polish far-right leader Grzegorz Braun has been charged with six alleged crimes, including inciting hatred against Jews and vandalising an LGBT+ exhibition. The other four allegations relate to an incident in which he confronted a doctor who performed a late-term abortion.
The charges are the latest in a long line of legal cases against Braun, who is already on trial for attacking a Jewish ceremony in Poland’s parliament. However, his party continues to poll strongly, and may play a significant role in deciding what kind of government is formed after next year’s elections.
Do sześciu razy sztuka. Grzegorz Braun dostał zarzuty, w tym za uwięzienie ginekolożki Gizeli Jagielskiej
Wcześniej europoseł Grzegorz Braun pięć razy unikał przedstawienia zarzutów w Prokuraturze Okręgowej we Wrocławiu. Zainterweniował Prokurator Generalny Waldemar Żurek.…
— Bartosz T. Wieliński 🇵🇱🇪🇺🇺🇦🇬🇱 (@Bart_Wielinski) October 26, 2026
As a member of the European Parliament, Braun enjoys legal immunity from prosecution. However, in November 2025, the EP stripped him of immunity to face the six charges.
Subsequently, prosecutors tried five times to present Braun with the charges. However, he evaded those attempts by filing motions to have prosecutors excluded from the case or simply by leaving the prosecutor’s office before the charges were read.
In July, Poland’s justice minister and prosecutor general, Waldemar Żurek, filed a motion to the EP for permission to forcibly detain Braun and present him with the charges. That application has not yet been considered but, on Monday, Braun finally attended the prosecutor’s office and heard the charges.
Afterwards, Braun told a small group of his followers and the media outside the office in Wrocław that he was the victim of a “state lynching” carried out by “the prosecutor’s office of the Hannukah cannibals, racists and genocide perpetrators”.
Four of the charges against Braun relate to an incident in April 2025, when he entered a hospital and confronted a gynaecologist who had been involved in a late-term abortion that had drawn controversy and condemnation from right-wing groups.
Braun claimed he was carrying out a citizen’s arrest, but is now charged with deprivation of liberty (for preventing the doctor from leaving her office), violating bodily integrity (by pushing her and holding her down), as well as insult and slander. The maximum sentence for those crimes is five years in prison.
In separate proceedings, prosecutors later found that the doctor had not violated Poland’s strict abortion laws by terminating the pregnancy in the ninth month.
The fifth charge Braun is now facing stems from an infamous incident in December 2023, when he attacked a Jewish Hanukkah celebration in parliament, putting out the candles with a fire extinguisher.
Braun is already on trial over the incident itself. Now, however, prosecutors have charged him over a YouTube interview he gave shortly after the attack, in which they say he “described Hanukkah as a Satanic and racist celebration posing a threat to Polish Catholics, which should be counteracted”.
For those remarks, he has been hit with a joint charge of inciting religious hatred and the obstruction of religious acts. The maximum penalty for those offences is a three-year jail term.
Finally, Braun has been charged with destruction of property for an incident during his presidential campaign in March this year when he vandalised an exhibition about the local LGBT+ community in the city of Opole, spray-painting “stop the propaganda of perversion” on it.
Police are investigating far-right presidential candidate and MEP Grzegorz Braun after he vandalised an LGBT+ exhibition.
The city where it took place immediately cancelled a meeting he was due to hold there and is seeking compensation for the damage https://t.co/EbDpMzmpFw
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) March 20, 2025
Braun has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him, as he has done with a string of other charges for various offences relating to his antisemitic, anti-Ukrainian and anti-LGBT rhetoric and actions.
In September, he was stripped of immunity by the EP for the sixth time in order to hear charges of Holocaust denial for his claims that the gas chambers in the Nazi-German death camp of Auschwitz are “fake”.
Braun’s high-profile stunts have seen his popularity surge among a section of the electorate. He finished a surprise fourth in last year’s Polish presidential election, with over 6% of the vote, and his Confederation of the Polish Crown (KKP) party is now polling around 9%.
If it manages to secure that level of support at next autumn’s parliamentary elections, KKP could become a key player in deciding what kind of government can be formed after what looks likely to be a very close contest between the ruling coalition, which ranges from left to centre right, and the right-wing and far-right opposition.
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: Alexis HAULOT © European Union 2026 – Source : EP
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.
