Former head of Polish police charged over explosion of Ukrainian grenade launcher in his office

The former national head of Poland’s police, Jarosław Szymczyk, has been charged over an incident in which he is accused of illegally possessing and accidentally firing a grenade launcher in his office that had been gifted to him during a visit to Ukraine. If found guilty, he could face years in prison.

The incident, which took place in December 2022, caused major damage at the main police headquarters in Warsaw, including blowing a hole in the floor. Szymczyk and one civilian employee were hospitalised with minor injuries.

Szymczyk, who served as police chief from 2016 to 2023, visited prosecutors in Warsaw today, where he was interviewed as a suspect and presented with two charges over the incident.

“The first charge concerns possession without a licence of a portable, anti-tank, recoilless weapon in the form of an RGW 90 grenade launcher, which was obtained in Ukraine and transported across the border without reporting it to the relevant services,” said prosecutors’ spokesman Piotr Antoni Skiba, quoted by news website Onet.

“The second [charge] concerns the unintentional endangerment of the life and health of many people and property in the form of the police headquarters building in connection with the release of the safety catches on the anti-tank weapon, then firing a shot, which caused a violent release of energy,” he added.

The first charge is punishable by up to eight years in prison while the second carries a potential jail sentence of up to five years. “General Szymczyk stated that he does not understand these allegations and refused to comment on them,” said Skiba.

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Previous media reports indicate that Szymczyk received the grenade launcher as a gift from the heads of Ukrainian uniformed services during a visit to Ukraine in 2022.

According to Onet, the grenade launcher was believed to have been converted into a loudspeaker and to be empty inside. But no one checked to confirm if that was actually the case.

After the explosion, at first the police tried to downplay the incident, even saying that a ceiling had collapsed during construction work, reports Onet. They never provided a comprehensive explanation of what had happened.

Szymczyk was an appointee of the former Law and Justice (PiS) government and resigned from his position in December last year, shortly before a new ruling coalition replaced PiS in office.

In February this year, the interior minister in the new government that replaced PiS, Marcin Kierwiński, said that “27 very serious irregularities” had been identified in relation to the grenade launcher incident. He then notified prosecutors of potential crimes, which led to today’s charges.

“It seems that the scale of the mess, incompetence and deliberate obstruction in this case led to the fact that no action was taken to protect the people who were on the premises of the police headquarters,” said Kierwiński at the time.

He added that it was lucky the explosion had not hit any load-bearing beams in the building, as that could have resulted in a much more serious incident.

Main image credit: Krzysztof Brejza/X

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.