Opposition supporters holds portraits of former Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski and ex-deputy Interior Minister Maciej Wasik during a protest against the detention of two MPs from the Law and Justice party in front of the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Poland, 09 January 2024. Opposition politicians have expressed their outrage over the detention of two MPs from the Law and Justice party who have been convicted of abuse of power. Mariusz Kaminski, a former interior minister, and Maciej Wasik, his ex-deputy, were detained by police officers at the Presidential Palace on 09 January evening. In December 2023, Kaminski and Wasik were sentenced to two years in prison for masterminding an anti-corruption provocation in 2007 when they were heading the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA). Earlier on 09 January, the police received documents containing an order issued by a Warsaw court to take both politicians into custody. 'In the Tusk-owned state, Civic Platform politicians charged with corruption are free, either in the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, or in the European Parliament,' Mariusz Blaszczak, the head of the Law and Justice (PiS) parliamentary caucus, wrote. ' And PiS politicians, who have been fighting against corruption during their entire political careers, are being sent to prison,' Blaszczak continued, adding that both politicians had been pardoned by the president and were still MPs. EPA-EFE/Radek Pietruszka POLAND OUT "I declare that I treat my conviction... as an act of political revenge," Kaminski said in the statement, read by his former deputy Blazej Pobozy at a press conference in front of the prime minister's office.
"As a political prisoner, I started a hunger strike from the first day of my imprisonment."
Police entered Poland's presidential palace to detain two of their former bosses on Tuesday, executing a court order to take the ex-interior minister and his deputy to prison and escalating a row between the head of state and the new government.
After winning power in October, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a former top EU official, has vowed to undo policies of his predecessors, the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, who faced accusations of subverting democracy during their eight-year rule.
The detention of the two lawmakers - Kaminski and his former deputy Maciej Wasik - were the latest salvo in a row that is likely to be one of many during a period of cohabitation in which the government and president are from different political camps.
Hundreds of protesters gathered on Tuesday in front of the presidential palace at the behest of the PiS party, of which Kaminski and Wasik are members, and in front of a police station where they were being held.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz, Marek Strzelecki; Editing by Ros Russell)
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