Warsaw police have published a statement attempting to explain Friday’s forced entry into the home of Tomasz Sakiewicz, CEO of TV Republika. Officers attached to the statement a report that allegedly served as the basis for the intervention. The head of the House of Free Speech responded to the police explanation, outlining in a statement why, in his view, their actions were unlawful.
For several days, TV Republika has been reporting what it describes as a coordinated campaign of false alarms. Citing such reports, police officers have been entering the homes of the station’s journalists and employees. TV Republika’s programming director, Michał Rachoń, stated that around 30 incidents of various kinds had occurred.
On Friday, one such incident took place at the home of Tomasz Sakiewicz, CEO of the House of Free Speech. Officers entered his apartment while refusing to identify themselves and handcuffed his assistant after she demanded that they do so. They then searched the premises.
The intervention sparked a wave of outrage. Commentators reacting to the incident compared the officers’ conduct to methods associated with Belarus and frequently described it as repression directed against a television station critical of the government.
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Alleged suicide attempt
During the night, Warsaw police issued a statement on the matter, attaching what they described as “a printout of the report recorded in the police intervention system, to the extent that it could be made public.”
“Once again, we emphasize that information concerning a real threat to life and the need to protect it determined the decisive manner in which the patrol dispatched to the scene conducted the intervention,”
the police wrote on X.
The report referred to an alleged child attempting to commit suicide by opening a gas cylinder.
However, the officers did not address the key questions surrounding the intervention: why they reacted so aggressively toward Sakiewicz’s assistant, why they refused to identify themselves and wore no personal identification markings, and why one of them had a patch from the police command in Poczesna, in the Silesian Voivodeship.
The police explanation was heavily criticized by internet users.
Sakiewicz’s Statement
The officers’ explanations have also failed to convince Sakiewicz himself. In a statement issued on Saturday, the head of TV Republika listed what he described as the unlawful aspects of the police operation:
“Why the police acted illegally in my home:
1. There were no grounds for intervention, because the warnings concerning alleged ‘threats’ appearing in our media for several hours had themselves been assessed by the Government Security Centre (RCB) as having low credibility. Such information was circulated among state institutions together with one of the original emails. Interestingly, that email was not shown to the people directly concerned.
2. This was the second intervention of this kind at the same address within 24 hours. The previous one had been classified as a false alarm, which already reduced the credibility of the report. The earlier case had been verified over the phone and deemed sufficiently resolved.
3. The police officers had neither name tags nor identification numbers, which can be seen in the photographs, even though at least one such identifier on the uniform is mandatory.
4. Despite lacking the markings required by law, they refused until the very end of the operation to identify themselves.
5. The reason force was used against my assistant was simply that she demanded that they identify themselves. She did not obstruct them, even during these unlawful actions.
6. If requests for identification bothered them so much, I myself demanded it much more forcefully, yet no such measures were used against me.
7. My assistant was handcuffed with her hands behind her back, a method used only in the case of exceptionally dangerous individuals, and it was done in such a way that bodily injury occurred.
8. The police stated that they would release her if she showed them her ID card, which was impossible because she was handcuffed. This bore the hallmarks of abuse.
9. Analogous demands to show identification documents were not made of me, even though I was not handcuffed. I was not asked to accompany the officers during the inspection of the apartment. An officer conducted it alone and without a warrant. No report was prepared, nor was I instructed where information about the intervention could be obtained.
10. The handcuffed assistant was led out onto the street in front of dozens of witnesses, and after the handcuffs were removed, she was abandoned there despite being in shock. The officers left the scene while continuing to refuse to provide their personal details.”