Several people already have the status of injured parties in the investigation into the false alarms targeting TV Republika, the Niezależna.pl portal learned from the prosecutor’s office. So far, however, none of the journalists and associates of the station have obtained such status. There will also be separate proceedings concerning the scandalous intervention at the home of editor Tomasz Sakiewicz.
The Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office will take over the investigation from the Warsaw Mokotów District Prosecutor’s Office — as its spokesman Piotr Antoni Skiba informed us — “due to the very complicated nature of the case.” As he explained, specialists working for the Central Bureau for Combating Cybercrime permanently cooperate with the Warsaw district office, where there is an appropriate department for combating cybercrime.
The prosecutor’s office began acting after the scandal involving the police
The investigation began over the weekend. Authorities are examining a violation of Article 224a paragraph 1 of the Penal Code, which criminalizes the offense of falsely notifying services about a threat to the life or health of many people or to property of significant value. The prosecutor’s office — as Piotr Antoni Skiba informed Niezależna.pl — initiated the proceedings “based on police materials” prepared after the police intervention at the home of editor Tomasz Sakiewicz. The incident took place on Friday afternoon. Additionally, a copy of a notification of suspected criminal activity filed by Anita Czerwińska, an MP from Law and Justice, was attached to the case files.
The prosecutor’s office claims that it is “examining an eastern thread,” but we did not receive an answer as to exactly since when and on the basis of what information. According to spokesman Piotr Antoni Skiba, “this is one of the investigative versions seriously being considered.”
Victims? Not Republika
There are several people in the investigation who have received injured-party status.
“These are several individuals whose email accounts were used in the attacks. This is not a simple matter involving one phone or one email. One can see planned actions on a broad scale. All actions conducted over the last several dozen hours had a strictly technical nature and were based on digital evidence preservation and IT analyses,” said Skiba.
Do Republika journalists have injured-party status? No. “Currently, individual journalists do not possess such status, but they may participate in the proceedings on the basis of Article 306 paragraph 1a point 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, provided that certain conditions specified in that provision are met on their side,” Skiba claimed.
“Considering that the procedural situation is dynamic, this status may change depending on changes in significant factual circumstances, for example the fulfillment of the elements of specific acts to the detriment of specific persons,” he added.
Over the weekend, a 53-year-old man who had allegedly been a suspect was detained, but turned out to be… an injured party. How did that happen? “At the moment when this person was detained, emails with false notifications were still being sent from an account that had been created using his personal data and marked with his identity,” Skiba explained.
Another man whose email address appeared in the false police reports stated that his data had already been used in this way back in… 2023. “The police have known about the matter for years and are unable to do anything,” Jan Adryańskiwrote on the X platform. Does he also have the status of an injured party? “Such a person does not appear in these proceedings,” Skiba informed.
The assistant of Tomasz Sakiewicz also filed a separate notification of suspected criminal activity concerning abuse of power and failure to fulfill duties by police officers in connection with their intervention at the apartment of the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Polska. “There will most likely be separate proceedings in this matter,” Skiba informed.