Evidence rigged to protect police—claim

Press, 2 June 1984, Page 11

Evidence rigged to protect police—claim

NZPA-Reuter Warsaw The mother of a Polish student who died of a beating after the police detained him charged yesterday that evidence had been rigged to protect two policemen being tried in the case. On the first day of the trial, Mrs Barbara Sadowska, whose 18-year-old son, Grzegorz Przemyk, died two days after the police detained him on May 12, 1983, said in a written statement that she was withdrawing from the case as a plaintiff. “A simple case with obvious evidence has been turned into a monstrous case by cunning alterations, exaggerations and cover-ups — in short, by manipulation,” Mrs Sadowska said. Two ambulance attendants are charged with causing the teen-ager’s death by beating, and two doctors are accused of negligence that contributed to his death. The policemen are accused of taking part in a brawl that endangered his life or health. The trial has become a cause celebre for the outlawed Solidarity labour movement which has labelled Mr Przemyk's death a case of police brutality. Some 20,000 mourners attended Mr Przemyk’s funeral last year in one of the

largest unofficial demonstrations of the martial law period. Thousands of people also attended a memorial service for Mr Przemyk 13 days ago. Mrs Sadowska, a poet, looked thin and haggard when her lawyer handed her statement to the Chief Judge at Warsaw’s provincial courthouse. The Judge did not read the statement aloud but a copy was made available outside to Western reporters. “It is disgustingly cynical of the authorities to charge the policemen with beating my late son and not to connect that with his death,” she said. Mrs Sadowska said her son had told her, in a brief period of consciousness be-

fore his death, that the police had beaten him on the night of his detention. She said one of his friends who was also taken to the police station had “listened helplessly to him howling in pain” and another had actually witnessed the beating. ® Lech Walesa and 40 other top leaders of Solidarity have informed the Government they will not vote in the June 17 local elections in order to protest against the suppression of the union. Solidarity’s underground leaders earlier urged the union’s 9.5 million members to boycott the elections, which will fill 330,000 local and State jobs with candidates carefully screened by Communist authorities. The Solidarity leaders carefully avoided the use of the word boycott to avoid possible prosecution for interfering with elections. In a letter to the Election Commissioner, Adam Zielinski, dated May 28 and handed to Western correspondents, they said the elections “sanctioned the status quo, which is characterised by the introduction and application of repressive laws, brutality by police, and imprisonment of people for their political convictions, and departs from the principle of pluralistic trade unions and social organisations.”