A defamation case has opened today in Warsaw, where former president Lech Walesa is accusing current president Lech Kaczynski of slander.

 

Lech Walesa has taken President Kaczynski to court for defamation and demands 100,000 zloty (24,270 euro) in damages.

 

In 2008, Lech Kaczynski accused Lech Walesa of cooperation with the Communist Secret Services (SB) in the 1970s and claimed that the former president collaborated under the code name “Bolek”.

Today the court heard the statement originally made by President Kaczynski on Polsat TV. Neither Lech Walesa nor President Kaczynski was in court today. 

 

“Lech Kaczynski will not come to the court in person. Instead, he will send an attorney,” Wladyslaw Stasiak from the Chancellery of the President told Polskie Radio.

 

“No matter how hard he dodges, I’ll manage to get him”, said Walesa and added that Kaczynski, as the head of state, and lawyer by profession, should not undermine court’s rulings.  

Similar accusations were leveled against Walesa by Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, historians from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), in the book Secret Services and Lech Walesa, published last year.

 

The former president denies the allegations of collaboration with the Communist Secret Services and claims that agents forged the documents. The former head of state and leader of Solidarity also points out that the ruling of the Vetting Court from 2000 cleared him of similar accusations and decided that he was a victim of the Communist Secret Services, not a collaborator. (mg/pg)