A man who plotted a bomb attack on a mosque has been sentenced to five years and five months in prison by a Polish court.
According to the findings of Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW), the man – who can be named only as Marcin K. under Polish privacy law – belonged to an unnamed group of far-right extremists.
The radicals aimed to prevent the “Islamisation” of Poland by targeting Muslims living in the country, including through a bomb attack on a mosque. They were inspired by the terrorist attacks carried out by Anders Breivik in Norway and Brenton Tarrant in New Zealand, said the ABW in a statement.
Marcin K. was one of two men arrested in 2019. During searches of their premises, officers found explosives, firearms, ammunition and vials of toxic substances, which were also intended to be used in the attack.
#ABW w miejscu zatrzymania mężczyzn przygotowujących ataki z użyciem mat. wybuchowych znalazła prawdziwe laboratorium chemiczne i arsenał. Agencja zneutralizowała realne zagrożenie! pic.twitter.com/NcrFZNWHuA
— Stanisław Żaryn (@StZaryn) November 13, 2019
“They expressed extreme-right views, and one of them publicly declared the need to exterminate [certain] religious groups,” announced the spokesman for Poland’s security services, Stanisław Żaryn, quoted by TVP Info.
“Marcin K., together with another person, intended to carry out an attack with the use of, among other things, explosives,” said the national prosecutor’s office, quoted by Onet. “Their targets were to be places and people belonging to the Islamic community living in Poland.”
One of the detained men created a “kind of manifesto expressing Islamophobia and calling for persecution of migrants, ranging from hooligan acts and intimidation to the use of firearms and explosives”, said the ABW.
Marcin K. was previously jailed in 2014 for manufacturing weapons on behalf of another Polish terrorist, Brunon K., who was captured in 2012 while planning an attack on Poland’s parliament. After his release from prison, Marcin K. was monitored by the security services, which led to his arrest on the current charges in 2019.
Main image credit: ABW
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.
