Polish Police Arrest Man on Suspicion of Plotting Assassination of PM Tusk
A man has been arrested for allegedly planning to assassinate Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his Defence Minister and Deputy PM Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz.
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński announced on social media on Sunday evening that “the man who threatened Prime Minister Donald Tusk and planned to attack him has been detained by police.”
According to the Polish Press Agency, Kierwiński said that the alleged attempted assassin is a man in his 60s, who was arrested in Lower Silesia on Sunday after police traced him through his internet posts.
Police became aware of the alleged plot against Prime Minister Tusk and Deputy Prime Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz, who also serves as Warsaw’s Defence Minsiter from a confidential informant.
Kierwiński said that the suspect appears to be involved in “very radical groups” and was actively “establishing very radical contacts with various people online.”
“This is definitely a person who was very active in various fringe groups, expressing extreme views… using very hateful language, calling for violence and hatred in public life,” the Interior Minister added.
Spokesman Jacek Dobrzyński said that the Polish security services were treating the matter as “deadly serious”, noting that “we are talking about threats directed at the most important figures in the state, concerning the safety and lives of the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.”
However, the government has yet to provide a definitive motive for the alleged plot or whether an ideology motivated the planned attack.
Broadcaster TVN24 reported that an informant in the case had claimed that the suspect had contacted a known radical group on social media “seeking volunteers to carry out an attack using firearms”.
The informant also asserted that he had met with a man “with whom he discussed weapons, hatred of the government, and the planned mass murder”.
Meanwhile, the Warsaw daily Rzeczpospolita reported that sources close to the investigation have confirmed that the alleged plot is not connected to the spate of school stabbings across Poland over the past week.
The disclosure of the alleged assassination attempt has been met with some criticism from the opposition, with some claiming that it was being used as a distraction from scandals currently enveloping the government, including accusations of impropriety against Tusk ally and former government minister Michał Kołodziejczak, including pressuring his employees to take cocaine.
Speaking to news portal Onet, the former head of the head of the Bureau of Government Protection (BOR) — the Polish equivalent to the U.S. Secret Service — General Mirosław Gawor said that there has been “unnecessary confusion” surrounding the government’s response and suggested that there may be hidden motives for the disclosure.
“For the security services, such signals about possible threats to protected individuals are not uncommon. And informing the public makes this protection more difficult to implement,” he said. “Therefore, I believe there’s some hidden agenda in publicly disclosing this information.”
For its part, the government has claimed it felt it needed to reveal the plot to “prevent the spread of false information and speculation.”
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