Neither an arrest warrant nor a European Arrest Warrant for Mohamed Addamrou, the killer of Sergeant Mateusz Sitek, appears in the publicly accessible wanted-persons databases maintained by the Polish police, Europol, or Interpol. Why? In response to questions from Niezalezna.pl, Europol replied: “The decision to publish the profile of a wanted person rests solely with the competent national authorities of the Member States.” “In line with their national operational priorities,” it stressed.
Moroccan national Mohamed Addamrou is the suspect in the killing of 21-year-old Sergeant Mateusz Sitek, a soldier of the 1st Warsaw Armoured Brigade who was serving on the Polish-Belarusian border. On the night of 28 May 2024, near the village of Dubicze Cerkiewne, he was stabbed with a knife. Sergeant Mateusz Sitek died from his injuries on 6 June.
The investigation has been conducted for two years by the Warsaw Regional Prosecutor’s Office, yet the killer of the Polish soldier remains unpunished. At the end of May this year, the proceedings were suspended.
“After obtaining a decision from the District Court for the Capital City of Warsaw ordering pre-trial detention for Mohamed Addamrou, searches for the suspect were launched by means of an arrest warrant and a European Arrest Warrant,”
prosecutor Piotr A. Skiba, spokesman for the Warsaw prosecutor’s office, assured in a recent statement.
No consent to publish the EAW
But there is a problem. As Niezalezna.pl and Gazeta Polska revealed, the Moroccan’s name does not appear in the publicly accessible wanted-persons databases of the National Police Headquarters, Interpol, or Europol.
Niezależna.pl asked the prosecutor’s office and the Military Gendarmerie for permission to publish the EAW issued for Addamrou. It was refused. The Regional Court in Białystok, which issued the decision on the EAW, responded in the same way, it had received the application a year and a half after the crime was committed.
“I inform you that this is not possible, as the case you are interested in is at the stage of preparatory proceedings, and it is the prosecutor, as the authority in charge of those proceedings, who may decide whether to make materials from the preparatory proceedings available to representatives of the press,”
stated Judge Wiesław Żywolewski, president of the Regional Court in Białystok.
What is an “operational priority”?
Niezależna.pl also sent questions to the National Police Headquarters, Interpol, and Europol, seeking to establish why no arrest warrant or EAW has been published for the wanted Mohamed Addamrou.
So far, the media outlet has received a response only from the latter institution. Its content is highly surprising.
Although it first noted that “as a general rule, Europol does not comment on cases concerning specific individuals or ongoing proceedings,” it also pointed to the rules in force.
“The publication of a wanted person on the Europe’s Most Wanted platform does not occur automatically following the issuance of a European Arrest Warrant,”
the response reads.
And then comes the most important passage.
“The decision to publish the profile of a wanted person rests solely with the competent national authorities of the Member States. Each participating country has a limited number of profiles available and decides independently which wanted persons are published on or removed from the platform, in line with its national operational priorities. Europol provides the technical infrastructure for the platform, but does not decide which individuals are featured on it,”
Europol stated.
Does this mean that publishing the EAW for the killer of a Polish soldier is not among the “operational priorities” of the Polish services?!