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Poland's President Duda: "You have been pardoned"

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NurPhoto/Getty Images

The struggle over the execution of prison sentences for two politicians from the former Polish ruling party PiS is entering the next round.

Poland's President Andrzej Duda has now pardoned former Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński, who was arrested two weeks ago in the presidential palace in Warsaw, and his colleague Maciej Wasik, who was also convicted.

Duda announced this in a televised speech.

“You have been pardoned,” said Duda.

Kamiński and Wasik were arrested on January 9th and subsequently taken to prison.

Both were initially visited by the police at their places of residence without success.

However, it turned out that Kamiński and Wasik were staying with President Andrzej Duda in the presidential palace.

After several hours, the PiS politicians were finally arrested there.

In December, the PiS politicians were sentenced to two years in prison for abuse of office by a Warsaw district court in an appeal process.

The background to the trials against the politicians was an affair uncovered in 2007, in which the anti-corruption agency, then headed by Kamiński, is said to have deliberately orchestrated a corruption case in order to discredit the then Agriculture Minister Andrzej Lepper.

New justice minister rejected pardon procedures

Duda had already announced almost two weeks ago that he had asked Justice Minister Adam Bodnar to initiate pardon proceedings.

Bodnar responded to this application with a negative statement on Tuesday.

However, this is not binding for the president.

Duda had already pardoned the two after an initial trial in 2015.

However, the Supreme Court declared this pardon to be unlawful because the appeal process was still ongoing at the time.

The president is no longer formally a member of the PiS party, but is still loyal to it.

The conflict between the new center-left government of Donald Tusk and the national-conservative PiS, which was voted out of office, had recently escalated further and further.

Shortly after his arrest, Kamiński went on hunger strike to protest against the execution of his sentence.

He sees himself as a political prisoner and his conviction is an "act of political revenge," said the former minister.

Poland's Deputy Justice Minister Maria Ejchart rejected the allegations, according to Reuters.

Most recently, according to Duda, a court ordered Kamiński to be force-fed.

fek/AFP/dpa