Word: popieluszko
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...mood has changed abruptly from the soporific to the macabre. And yet despite some grisly testimony, Polish public reaction to the trial of four Polish secret policemen for the abduction of Father Jerzy Popieluszko remains subdued. Poles have grown accustomed to switching on the state-controlled radio broadcast at 10:30 every night and listening to the latest installment of death and deception as defense attorneys and prosecutors alike in Torun's Courtroom 40 continue to tolerate a flood of contradictions from the witness stand. Perhaps to divert attention from Torun, early last week Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski paid an unprecedented...
...outlawed Solidarity leadership has been brilliantly successful at keeping protest alive. So far, Jaruzelski has been performing his high-wire balancing act with great skill, at some cost to Communist orthodoxy: the current trial of members of the secret police for the murder of Government Critic Father Jerzy Popieluszko is unprecedented in any Communist state. Poland's dilemma seems to defy resolution: it is almost as difficult to envision Jaruzelski's calming his turbulent nation as it is to foresee Moscow's letting Poland slip out of the Soviet camp. That is simply inconceivable...
Piotrowski and three other members of the Polish secret police--two lieutenants and a colonel, all now reduced to privates--are on trial for last October's abduction and murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, a priest who was an unyielding supporter of the banned Solidarity trade-union movement. As Piotrowski took the witness stand last week in Room 40 of the courthouse in the city of Torun, many expected the ex-captain to confirm the prosecution's original claim that the slaying was carried out with the knowledge and support of high-ranking members of the Internal Affairs Ministry, which...
Piotrowski described a meeting in late September in Pietruszka's office, also attended by Lieut. Colonel Leszek Wolski, head of Warsaw's local security office. Speaking of Father Popieluszko and Stanislaw Malkowski, another activist priest, the ex-captain recalled his superior saying, "Enough of this game playing with Popieluszko and Malkowski. We will take decisive action. We have to shake them so hard that it leads right up to a heart attack." As Pietruszka sat impassively, separated from Piotrowski by two uniformed police officers, the former captain revealed that the victim was originally to have been Malkowski. Piotrowski claimed that...
...almost three days of rambling testimony, Pekala had also explained how Piotrowski had been able to "create an atmosphere to make me sure that one of the deputy ministers knew all about it." Pekala gave his own version of the kidnaping attempt and told how Popieluszko had banged repeatedly against the trunk of the car into which he had been thrown, bound and gagged. According to Pekala, the priest briefly escaped and ran across a deserted hotel parking lot, yelling, "Help me, help me. Spare my life, you people." No one heard him, and he was quickly recaptured. Pekala testified...