A court in Wrocław has convicted a local resident for insulting Prime Minister Donald Tusk. In doing so, it accepted the testimony of police officers who accused the previously convicted man of assault. Interestingly, their version was not confirmed by either video footage of the incident or the statements of other officers.
At a time when southern and western Poland were being devastated by flooding, the government was cutting millions of Poles off from information. Journalists from Telewizja Republika were unlawfully barred from attending meetings of the crisis management team. The authorities’ actions outraged viewers of the station. One of them was Krzysztof from Wrocław, who decided to stage a protest in front of the local Voivodeship Office.
“This is the TV channel from which I get information […] I wanted to chant a slogan at the prime minister: ‘Donald, you coward, let the media in. What you’re doing is a tragedy.’ As I was looking for the right place to chant this slogan, the police came after me,” the man recalls.
The officers’ conduct was recorded. The footage shows a group of officers approaching the man and — at the moment the prime minister’s car passes — brutally subduing him. As he is being pulled and dragged by the police, he shouts after the car: “Nie bać Tuska” (“Don’t fear Tusk”).
Convicted for insulting Tusk
The case went to court based on charges brought by the police officers. The officers testified in court. Some were unable to clearly state what exactly the accused had shouted. Others, however, claimed that he was yelling vulgarities and refusing to comply with police commands. Notably, this second group — in another case — had accused the same man of assault.
The man’s defense attorney argued that part of the officers’ testimony contradicted itself, and that their version of events was not supported by the video.
The verdict was issued last Friday. The court accepted the statements of the police officers who blamed the protester. It concluded that the man had insulted a constitutional body and sentenced him to community service.
“The phrase used by the accused at the moment he was, as he put it, ‘thrown to the ground,’ was ‘f*** Tusk,’ not ‘Don’t fear Tusk,’” the judge said, explaining the verdict.
Identical testimonies
Telewizja Republika spoke with the convicted man’s father. He had no doubt that the officers’ testimonies were identical.
“Reading the official report and then reading the officer’s testimony, I immediately knew I had seen this somewhere […] I compared the official report, the testimony of one officer, the testimony of another officer. All the mistakes — identical, copy-paste, control C, control V,” the man said.
“I’m from a generation that remembers various events. From communist times, a bit later, and up to the present day, when I have seen with my own eyes how the police can behave. And I wasn’t wrong,” he added.