2024-05-09 14:39 update: 2024-05-10, 12:53
Photo PAP/Rafał Guz
A disciplinary court at the Supreme Administrative Court (NSA) has waived the immunity of Tomasz Szmydt, a judge who has defected to Belarus, the NSA spokesperson has told PAP.
On Monday, media reported that Szmydt, who had access to classified information while working in a Warsaw court, had asked for political asylum in Belarus.
On Wednesday, the National Prosecutor's Office (PK) opened an investigation into Szmydt's alleged cooperation with the foreign intelligence service on the territory of Poland and Belarus.
Later on Wednesday, Adam Bodnar, Polish justice minister and prosecutor general, wrote on the X platform that "The National Prosecutor's Office has just filed the motion to the disciplinary court for a resolution allowing for judge Tomasz Szmydt to be held accountable for any criminal act committed."
Bodnar also said that that PK filed a motion to a disciplinary court at the Supreme Administrative Court for the immunity of Szmydt to be revoked.
"PK also requests for permission to detain and temporarily arrest (Szmydt - PAP). Allegation: espionage," he added.
Later in the day Bodnar said that the motion to waive Szmydt's immunity is to provide the basis for issuing an arrest warrant for him.
Later on Thursday, Judge Sylwester Marciniak, a spokesman for the Supreme Administrative Court said that "The Disciplinary Court of the first instance, after examining the request of the National Prosecutor's Office of May 8 to issue a resolution to hold a judge of the Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw accountable for a criminal act... authorised his arrest, applied pre-trial detention to him, and suspended the said judge from his official duties."
Formally, he added, this resolution is not final.
Szmydt, a judge at the Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw, asked the Belarusian authorities for "care and protection" in Minsk on Monday. He told a press conference in Minsk that he had been forced to leave Poland "due to disagreement with the policy and actions of the current authorities" and claimed to have been persecuted and harassed due to his independent political views. (PAP)
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