MP Zbigniew Ziobro has been granted international protection and political asylum in Hungary – his defense lawyer Bartosz Lewandowski reported on X. In the coming days, a detention hearing is scheduled in Ziobro’s case, as he has become the main target of the ruling coalition. Lewandowski added that the asylum was granted to Ziobro “in connection with violations of rights and freedoms on the territory of Poland guaranteed by international law.”
The current authorities want to detain and place former Minister of Justice Zbigniew Ziobro in custody in a case related to the Justice Fund. In November last year, a prosecutor issued a decision to bring charges against Ziobro, as well as to detain him and forcibly bring him in by the Internal Security Agency (ABW).
It later emerged that Ziobro was not in Poland – he was in Budapest at the time and later also appeared in Brussels. In mid-November, the prosecution filed a motion for the temporary arrest of the former minister with the District Court for Warsaw-Mokotów. The court examined the motion on December 22 and postponed the hearing on a possible arrest of Ziobro until January 15, 2026, after it turned out that the prosecution had not provided the court with the complete case files.
It is now known – Ziobro, like MP Marcin Romanowski before him, has received political asylum in Hungary.
Lewandowski: Politically Motivated Repression
“Political asylum was granted to him by the Hungarian government pursuant to the 2007 Act on the Right to Asylum, in connection with the actions of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and services subordinate to the government, as a result of which a number of actions bearing the hallmarks of politically motivated political repression occurred (e.g., the invalidation of passports announced in advance by members of the government, deprivation of means of subsistence as a result of asset seizure)”, the lawyer wrote.
The justification for this type of international protection also includes: the practice of systematically using law enforcement authorities to repress the political opposition in Poland; open announcements of arrest and repression made by politicians of the current ruling majority (including the current Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice – Prosecutor General); the unlawful removal of National Prosecutor Dariusz Barski from performing his duties; political pressure on judges in Poland when adjudicating cases related to the investigation into the Justice Fund (explicitly stated in the reasoning of the Regional Court in Warsaw of December 19, 2025, case file No. VIII Kop 330/24); and a statutory violation in changing the method of appointing judges to panels by bypassing the lottery guaranteed by law – Lewandowski went on to list.
Ziobro’s defense lawyer also pointed out that the asylum is justified in light of statements suggesting the possibility of “bringing him to Poland in a car trunk”, made by Minister of Justice Waldemar Żurek. Not without significance were also the words directed at Judge Dariusz Łubowski when he lifted the European Arrest Warrant against the MP.