Wojciech Czuchnowski claims to know the contents of classified documents that proved decisive in postponing the detention hearing of former Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro. How could materials to which even the defendant’s lawyers had no access have ended up with a journalist from Gazeta Wyborcza? One can speculate about the answer to that question. However, the defence lawyer for the PiS MP, Bartosz Lewandowski, says this is “business as usual in a crypto-dictatorship.”
On Monday, the District Court for Warsaw-Mokotów postponed until mid-January the hearing on the possible pre-trial detention of former Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro. The PiS MP’s legal representatives requested this decision, arguing that the evidentiary material submitted by the prosecution contained “quite significant gaps.”
In granting the request, the court stated that classified materials had not been provided to it. The fact that this situation occurred was acknowledged by prosecutor Piotr Woźniak, who is heading the investigation at the National Prosecutor’s Office into irregularities in the spending of funds from the Justice Fund. He nevertheless downplayed the issue.
“These materials were not cited in the prosecutor’s motion for the application of pre-trial detention, because in the prosecution’s assessment they are not relevant to resolving the case,”
he declared.
Secret documents available to “Wyborcza”
What exactly is contained in the prosecution’s classified materials is a matter of curiosity. The answer to this question, however, was allegedly learned by a journalist from Gazeta Wyborcza. Wojciech Czuchnowski writes about it in an article published on the newspaper’s website.
The materials are said to consist of several volumes of files concerning the purchase of “Pegasus.” The documents allegedly include correspondence regarding the transaction and issues related to the security of operational data obtained by the system.
“Business as usual in a crypto-dictatorship”
Ziobro’s defence lawyer, attorney Bartosz Lewandowski, commented on the matter. “Interestingly, Gazeta Wyborcza knows the contents of classified files marked ‘top secret,’ while neither the court nor Zbigniew Ziobro’s defence lawyers had any chance to see them,” he said.
“Business as usual in a ‘crypto-dictatorship,’” he added, quoting from the reasoning of Judge Dariusz Łubowski in the case annulling the European Arrest Warrant for Marcin Romanowski.
Or perhaps another untruth?
It is worth recalling, however, an article the journalist wrote the day after the death of the late Barbara Skrzypek. In it, Czuchnowski wrote that the former head of Jarosław Kaczyński’s office stated during questioning that she had not signed a power of attorney authorising the PiS leader to represent her at the shareholders’ meeting of the company Srebrna.
At the time, the portal Niezalezna.pl exposed this claim as false by publishing a scan of the document in question. Shortly thereafter, the assertions made by the Wyborcza journalist were refuted by the prosecution, which disclosed the official record of the procedural actions involving Skrzypek.