Justice minister fires prosecutor over sentenced nationalist's case

The 24-year Marika was sentenced to three years in prison and has served one so far. In mid-July this year, Polish ultra-conservative Catholic legal organization Ordo Iuris has launched a social campaign aimed at convincing President Andrzej Duda to pardon the 24-year-old woman. "Together with three other persons, in an act of protest against promoting extreme-left ideologies, she tried to tear off an LGBT movement-colored bag of a woman. As a result, she was charged," Ordo Iuris wrote at the time.

By the decision of the Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro, the sentenced 24-year-old was released. The law allows for a break in serving of a sentence during pardon proceedings.

At a press conference on Wednesday, minister Ziobro announced he had made personnel decisions in the Poznań-Stare Miasto District Prosecutor's Office, in relation to Marika's case. "I've decided to dismiss the prosecutor currently serving as deputy chief of the district prosecutor's office," he said.

"Why the deputy chief of the district proscutor's office has been dismissed? Because the liability is adequate to the tasks the prosecutor was responsible for," Ziobro explained.

"It was the prosecutor, who was duty bound to supervise the right course of these proceedings, the legal classification of the offence, as well as the conclusions regarding the sentence."

The minister added that "in these proceedings - with all certainty - the prosecutor did not rise to the challenge". "Glaring mistakes were made that resulted in a dubious legal classification, completely inadequate penal reaction to a reprehensible conduct, blameworthy and punishable, but in an adequate way."

"There can be no consent to ideological and worldview reasons influencing the way certain offences are assessed and how those responsible for said offences are punished," Ziobro argued. "There is no place for the rule known from the Bolshevik era: 'show me the man and I'll find you the crime'. Unfortunately, this way of thinking comes to mind when we look at this here case," he added.

In this context, Ziobro vowed he would firmly demand that ideology, politics, and party agenda stay out of the courts. "In Poland there should not be any room for politics in courts, and, unfortunately, it can be seen in courts increasingly often."

Also present at the press conference, Tomasz Szafrański, a National Public Prosecutor's Office prosecutor, commented on the court ruling regarding Marika and an accomplice. In his view, when looking into the case, the court made glaring logical mistakes. He argued that the assessment of the sentence must lead to the following conclusion: "one blunder after another, and a biased argumentation directed at supporting the thesis about how bad and dangerous the defendants are, instead of proving what kind of a blameworthy and serious crime they have committed".

gf