On Saturday, the court imposed temporary detention on PiS MP Dariusz Matecki. The politician was detained for two months rather than the three months requested by the prosecutor’s office. Matecki’s defence attorney announced that an appeal against the decision would be filed regardless.
Former Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro commented on the court’s decision.
“This is yet another instance of a staged spectacle—a judicial and prosecutorial farce. It is no surprise to me that this particular judge handled the case. This judge is already known from the case concerning the Justice Fund, which was discredited by the Ombudsman’s report. That report exposed multiple serious violations committed by law enforcement and judicial authorities in connection with the arrest of Father Olszewski,”
he stated.
Ziobro further claimed that the prosecutor’s office had “handpicked this judge”—Joanna Włoch, a member of Iustitia—in order to “orchestrate the ruling.”
In his view, the prosecutor’s office had discredited itself because “MP Matecki presented several hundred documents—objective pieces of evidence—demonstrating that he had completed not just one or two, but hundreds of various tasks for the State Forests.” Despite this evidence, he argued, “[…] facts do not matter at all. Evidence does not matter at all. What matters are political spectacles.”
Will the Detention Be Extended?
Ziobro also addressed the difference between a two-month and a three-month detention period. “As a former Prosecutor General, I understand MP Gosek’s decision. The prosecutor’s office did not get what it wanted. However, let us look at what happened in the case of Father Olszewski,” he noted.
“At first, there was a minor charge, then additional accusations were fabricated, and that is how investigative detention was prolonged—to extract confessions and break the individual, just as was done with female clerks who were subjected to improper treatment in prison. This is a setup. The judge wanted to play it as if she were ‘fair’—not granting the full period requested by the prosecution. But just wait: in two months, they will come back, and another handpicked judge will be assigned. It will happen just as I say. What we are witnessing here is politics, party-driven favouritism, and the illegal takeover of the prosecutor’s office and courts,”
Ziobro asserted.
He further declared that Poland is now “ruled by a criminal group.” “These people will go to prison, and I am not joking. These are not empty words,” he stated.
He went on to condemn the actions of Tusk’s associates, whom he referred to as “Bodnarowcy” (a reference to Adam Bodnar, the Prosecutor General).
“The legitimate National Prosecutor currently has his hands tied and is being prevented from fulfilling his duties. What we are seeing is a farce, a continuous criminal act. The prosecutors handling this case know they are operating within an illegally seized Prosecutor General’s Office. The individual acting as its head is an imposter who, along with his associates, is making decisions on surveillance measures and illegally conducting wiretaps—all of this is happening unlawfully. We are witnessing ongoing usurpation by an illegitimately appointed individual, which affects actions against MP Matecki and others,”
Ziobro stated.
In conclusion, he remarked, “They are going all in, implementing Donald Tusk’s doctrine of militant democracy, which—under ideological slogans—justifies violations of the law, as he himself has previously declared.”