The trial of former communist interior minister General Czeslaw Kiszczak has resumed in Warsaw.

Kiszczak, a close aide of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, is accused of being responsible for the deaths of nine miners at the start of martial law in 1981.

Three days after martial law was declared on December 13 ZOMO riot police, backed by army tanks, smashed into the barricaded Wujek colliery in the south of Poland - nine miners were killed and over twenty wounded.

Czeslaw Kiszczak, now 84, pleaded innocent this morning and the judge then adjourned the case till February 22.

Prosecutors allege that in December 1981 Kiszczak gave orders to the riot police to use fire arms against the striking miners , even though he was not empowered to do so.

The various trials of General Czeslaw Kiszczak have been going on now for 16 years. He was acquitted in 1996, sentenced to two years in prison in a following trial in 2004, but the verdict later overruled by a court of appeals.

The third trial in 2008 concluded with the court stating that Kiszczak acted unintentionally and the case has crossed the statute of limitations. The prosecution appealed against the verdict.

Trials of those responsible for the colliery massacre started after 1991. After 15 years, in 2008, a sentence was passed against fourteen former members of the ZOMO riot police. The same year saw the opening of a trial against General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Czeslaw Kiszczak and head of the Polish United Workers' Party, Stanislaw Kania, who have been accused of communist crimes for the imposition of martial law.

The 'pacification' of the protest has become a symbol of the brutality of martial law, declared by communist party leader General Wojciech Jaruzelski. (ab)