Opposition MP stripped of immunity over alleged disclosure of state secrets
Poland's Sejm, lower house of parliament, has waived the immunity of Antoni Macierewicz, a deputy leader of the socially-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party and former defence minister, so that he can face criminal charges over alleged disclosure of state secrets.
On Tuesday, 240 MPs voted for the waiver of Macierewicz's immunity, 190 against, and 9 abstained.
In early July, then justice minister and prosecutor general, Adam Bodnar, requested that parliament lift Macierewicz's immunity so that he could be charged with disclosing classified information as the head of the Smolensk subcommission. The contested panel was formed in 2016 when PiS was in power to re-investigate the 2010 Smolensk air crash in Russia that killed then President Lech Kaczynski and dozens of Poland's senior politicians and military leaders.
On Monday,Przemyslaw Nowak, the National Prosecutor's Office spokesman, said prosecutors had gathered evidence indicating a reasonable suspicion that Macierewicz, while acting as as a public official – the chairman of the Subcommittee for the Re-Investigation of the Air Accident and a member of the State Aviation Accident Investigation Commission – revealed information classified as "top secret", "secret", "confidential", and "restricted", as well as "protected information", he became familiar with in connection with the function he performed between April 11, 2018 and May 22, 2022.
The offences carry prison sentences of up to five years.
In 2022, the Smolensk subcommission, which worked under the auspices of Poland's then defence ministry, unveiled its findings in a 338-page report that claimed the disaster was caused by "at least two blasts" and by "political factors."
On April 17, 2023, Macierewicz submitted a formal "report of a possible crime", which stated that the 2010 Smolensk air crash may have been "a pre-planned assassination" of President Lech Kaczynski and the murder of 95 other people.
After the current government took power in December 2023, the Smolensk subcommission was disbanded. In January 2024, a team was appointed to assess its operation. In October of last year, the Ministry of Defence presented the team's report along with 21 notifications of possible criminal offences by Macierewicz and 10 by former Defence Minister Mariusz Blaszczak.(PAP)
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