Hungary revokes refugee status of fugitive Polish ex justice minister

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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.

Poland’s government says it has received confirmation that Hungary has revoked the refugee status that was granted to fugitive ex-justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro by the former Hungarian government of Viktor Orbán. Ziobro’s associated travel documents have also been invalidated.

The news was welcomed by the current justice minister, Waldemar Żurek, who says that Poland will now ask the United States, where Ziobro fled after Orbán was ousted from power in Hungary, to determine whether Ziobro is allowed to remain on US territory without travel documents.

Ziobro, who served as justice minister from 2015 to 2023 under the former national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government, is wanted in Poland on suspicion of 26 crimes, including leading a criminal group and approving the unlawful purchase of Pegasus spyware.

However, he has evaded justice by fleeing first to Hungary – where he was granted asylum in December 2025 – and then to the US. Although Ziobro’s Polish passport had been invalidated, he was able to fly to the US using a so-called “Geneva passport” that can be granted to someone with refugee status.

Ziobro’s departure from Hungary came just as the new prime minister, Péter Magyar, was being sworn in. Magyar is an ally of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and had pledged to begin the process of extradicting Ziobro on his first day in office.

On Thursday afternoon, Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, confirmed that he had “received written confirmation that Hungary has revoked refugee status for Marcin Romanowski, Zbigniew Ziobro and Patrycja Kotecka-Ziobro”, and had also annulled their travel documents.

Romanowski is a former deputy minister who served under Ziobro and was also granted asylum in Hungary after fleeing criminal charges in Poland. His current whereabouts are unknown. Patrycja Kotecka-Ziobro is Ziobro’s wife.

Later on Thursday, Polish interior minister Marcin Kierwiński announced that he too had received information from his Hungarian counterpart, Gábor Pósfai, that the refugee status and travel documents of Romanowski, Ziobro and Kotecka-Ziobro had been revoked.

In response to the news, Żurek, the justice minister, said that Poland would now “reach out to the relevant institutions in the United States with a question about whether individuals deprived of valid travel documents may continue to stay on US territory”.

He also noted that, just a day earlier, a Polish court had upheld a request by prosecutors for Ziobro to be detained. That decision helps pave the way for Poland to request Ziobro’s extradition from the US.

Last week, Żurek had already told broadcaster TVN that he would contact the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) “if it turns out that the Hungarian documents on the basis of which Zbigniew Ziobro entered the United States were issued illegally”.

Speaking on Thursday to Polsat News before news had emerged of his refugee status being withdrawn, Ziobro claimed that the Polish government want ICE to deport him so that they can “bypass the extradition court procedure”.

That is because a court case would “risk exposing all their wrongdoing”, including how they have “used courts and prosecutors for political purposes”.

Ziobro also repeated his argument that he cannot currently return to Poland because he would not receive a fair trial while the justice system remains under the influence of the “lawless” current government.

During his time as justice minister, Ziobro was the architect of a series of controversial and contested judicial reforms, which Polish and European courts have repeatedly found to have violated the law and brought the justice system under political influence.

After PiS lost power in December 2023, the new, more liberal government led by Tusk began a series of investigations into alleged corruption and abuses of power under the former administration.

However, while charges have been brought against a number of former PiS officials – including former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki – none have yet gone on trial.

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: Sławek Kasper/IPN (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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.