Police blamed for ‘suicides’ in Polish jails

Press, 21 October 1978, Page 9

Police blamed for ‘suicides’ in Polish jails

By

NEAL ASCHERSON

in London

Poland’s police have a particularly nasty reputation for the number of prisoners who commit “suicide” or are injured “while resisting arrest.” Outrage over their behaviour has forced the Polish Ministry of the Interior to send a circular to every police station in the country entitled “Improper behaviour of the citizens’ militia in pursuit of their official duties.” The circular was intended for internal distribution only but a copy was obtained by the main Polish civil rights group, the Social Self-defence Committee.

The group was formed in 1976 to publicise the victimisation of workers who took part in the June strikes that year in Warsaw and Radom.

It is interesting that only one of nine case histories collected by the committee concerns the aftermath of the strike. The rest, scattered over a period of seven years, are cases of alleged “routine” police violence to prisoners, usually followed, the committee asserts, by an attempted cover-up. The Ministry of the Interior circular, quoted in the committee’s own report, includes a long list of instances of brutality, most involving the battering of suspects with rubber truncheons. One describes the unjust committal to a mental clinic of a woman who had lodged a complaint against the police.

Several of the committee’s case histories provide evidence of the mistrust between the police and the

local population. The funeral of Roman Milczarek, of Zawiercie, in Silesia, was attended by a big crowd which then demonstrated outside the police station. Milczarek had got into an argument with a police patrol, which chased him into his flat and arrested him with the help of truncheons and tear gas. His subsequent death in the police station was officially attributed to an overdose of “alcohol and luminal,” but witnesses testified to the committee that he had been beaten up, and that his corpse had a broken arm, a concave impact wound on the head, and bruising over the back.

In another case, Jerzy Grzebieluch was knocked down at a pedestrian crossing in the city of Katowice by a car containing two policemen. It was the rush hour, and many onlookers

said that the two occupants of the car then jumped out and attacked the victim. The crowd joined in the battle to defend Grzebieluch, but he was subsequently jailed for taking part in a “disorderly public concourse," the local paper described him as a “drunken hooligan." This was one of several cases in which some degree of justice was eventually obtained through the police courts. Hv was released early by order of the head public prosecutor’s office in Warsaw and eventually won compensation for wrongful arrest. His private lawsuit against one of the policemen is still going on.

Another case began with a row in a crowded Warsaw tram, when a passenger complained about the outstretched artificial leg of a reserve officer. The

fracas ended with the forcible arrest of the officer and his companions, ’who said that they were then ferociously beaten up in the police station for resisting arrest and insulting the police (“You are worse than the Gestapo.” one woman had shouted). The group were convicted and sentenced. The documents also include a remarkable protest letter from the deputy prosecutor in the town of Kalisz. Writing to the Polish Council of State, the prosecutor says that the supposed suicide of a young fanner whose body was found on a railway track was, in fact, a concealed murder committed by a local police official and his two unemployed brothers. However, the chief took his deputy off the case, in spite of hard evidence that the victim’s head wounds

had been inflicted long before the passage of the t-ain. The quashing of the case was. the deputy says, “a blatant violation of the legal norms in force in the Polish People's Republic." The Social Self-Defence Committee concludes that police brutality is common and frequently concealed by higher authorities. They demand an overhaul of the Polish judicial system.

The independence of the courts should be guaranteed by making it much harder to dismiss judges. The jobs of prosecution and investigation should t.• clearly separated, preliminary investigations should be conducted by an independent judge. and suspects must have the right to legal representation from the start of any investigation. O.F.N.S. copyright.