Following the decision of the District Court for Warsaw-Mokotów to adjourn the hearing on a possible pre-trial detention, former Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro sharply criticized the actions of prosecutors on the air of TV Republika. “An illegally seized, extremely politicized prosecutor’s office, used instrumentally to fight the opposition, is doing what it usually does – namely, breaking the law,” Ziobro said, accusing the prosecution of concealing part of the evidentiary material from the court and acting on political orders.
The District Court for Warsaw-Mokotów adjourned until mid-January the hearing concerning a potential arrest of the former Minister of Justice and PiS MP Zbigniew Ziobro. The decision was made following a motion by the defense, which pointed to deficiencies in the evidentiary material presented by the prosecution. Ziobro himself commented extensively on the case in an interview with TV Republika, conducted by Danuta Holecka.
The former minister did not spare criticism of the prosecution. As he emphasized, Poland is currently dealing with an institution that has been “illegally taken over, extremely politicized, and instrumentally used to combat the opposition.” In his view, the actions of investigators do not constitute the implementation of the rule of law, but rather its negation.
Ziobro pointed out that it was the prosecutor’s duty to present the court with the complete evidentiary record, rather than selectively handling the case files.
“Concealing parts of the material that may be relevant to the assessment of one of the most serious charges is yet another manifestation of contempt for the law,”
he stressed in his conversation with Danuta Holecka.
According to Ziobro, the current authorities have not stopped at the unlawful takeover of public media. “There has been an assault on a legally functioning prosecutor’s office. On the one hand, it serves to sweep under the rug corruption cases involving associates of Donald Tusk, and on the other, it is used as a tool to destroy and combat the largest opposition party,” he said.
In this context, the former minister emphasized the special role of the courts. In his opinion, they should serve as guarantors and arbiters of fairness in a state governed by the rule of law – free from political pressure and suspicions of entanglement. “Every Pole expects independence and integrity from a judge,” he noted.
Ziobro assessed the adjournment of the hearing by the Warsaw-Mokotów court as evidence that not everyone agrees to proceed based on incomplete material and the political expectations of those in power. As he emphasized, his case is merely one element of a broader sequence of events which, in his view, demonstrates the scale of the crisis of the rule of law in Poland following the takeover of the prosecutor’s office by the current authorities.