Poland’s opposition leader has escalated a dispute over two convicted lawmakers from his Law and Justice (PiS) party by threatening legal action to demonstrate that Prime Minister Donald Tusk ordered them to be tortured in prison.
Jarosław Kaczyński said on Thursday that his party “would appeal to the EU to accuse the Polish authorities of using torture” after a court ordered that one of the pair be force-fed.
He added: “I am convinced that this is Tusk’s personal decision and he should be held personally responsible for torture in Poland.”
Tusk’s government has denied any mistreatment of the MPs, but has not so far commented on the force-feeding specifically. It also denies claims by PiS that the pair should be considered political prisoners.
Kaczyński was speaking outside the main chamber of parliament amid heightened tensions over the whereabouts of former interior minister Mariusz Kamiński and his then deputy Maciej Wąsik, who were released from prison after receiving a fresh pardon from President Andrzej Duda this week.
The pair’s two-week prison stay has drawn nationwide attention since police detained the pair on January 9 in Duda’s presidential palace, where they had sought refuge from imprisonment after being convicted in December of abuse of power. They were then jailed and began a hunger strike.
A local court ordered Kamiński to be force-fed, and he was briefly transferred to hospital to check on his low blood sugar levels this week.
The wives of Kamiński and Wąsik wives led repeated protests outside the prison and stood by Duda, dressed in black, when he announced his pardon in a televised address on Tuesday.
Poland’s institutional feuding and the deepening polarisation of the country have led some politicians to warn that it could face an episode similar to the storming of the US Capitol in January 2021, after Donald Trump disputed having lost the presidential election.
Parliamentary Speaker Szymon Hołownia said this month that PiS lawmakers had “threatened me that they would do a second Capitol in the Sejm”, the lower house of parliament. But he insisted that “the Sejm will cope with attempts at obstruction”.
Kaczyński on Thursday questioned the legitimacy of the Tusk government, calling for a “transition period” and fresh elections. “We have an emergency situation. The constitution is practically no longer valid. Therefore, various methods can be used.”
“If anybody really has a coup in mind, it’s probably Kaczyński,” Tusk said. “We don’t have to have a coup because we won the elections and legally took over power in Poland.”
He added that his long-standing political rival was acting like “a man increasingly detached from reality, and on a scale that looks grotesque although with some dangerous accents”.
Police in Warsaw reinforced security around parliament on Thursday following reports that the two MPs were preparing to reclaim their seats by force, after they were stripped of their parliamentary mandates in the wake of December’s convictions.
To help defuse tensions, the committee in charge of parliamentary proceedings ordered that the lawmakers should be allowed in as visitors.
Kamiński said on Thursday that he and Wąsik planned to go to parliament in the coming days, but on their own terms and not those set by Hołownia, who also leads one of the parties in Tusk’s coalition.
“We are not former MPs,” Kamiński told wPolsce, a Polish media website. “There are illegal attempts to deprive MPs of the ability to exercise their mandates.”
On Wednesday, Tusk warned that Kamiński and Wąsik could face fresh prosecution even after being pardoned by the president for a second time, possibly over their alleged role in deploying the Pegasus spyware during the years when they ran the country’s anti-corruption bureau.
The then PiS government acknowledged purchasing Pegasus for law enforcement and national security purposes, but not to spy on political opponents.
Kaczyński claimed on Thursday that the pair were “in very poor health as a result of the crimes that were committed against them while in prison”.
Duda, who is PiS nominee, has so far sided with the opposition and Kaczyński in his feud with Tusk, which goes back over two decades. The PiS leader has repeatedly accused the premier of being both “a German agent” and helping the Kremlin kill his twin brother Lech, who was then president and died in a plane crash in 2010 in Russia, when Tusk was prime minister.
But despite the PiS accusations on Thursday, it was not immediately clear how Tusk’s government could be ousted within the democratic framework. His centre-right coalition holds a majority in both houses of parliament after winning October’s election with a record turnout.
The premier has vowed to push ahead with his reforms and the dismantling of the state apparatus built by PiS during its eight years in power. He is also counting on support from Brussels, which has welcomed the return to office in Warsaw of a pro-European politician.
