The body of Stanislaw Pyjas, murdered by the communist secret police in the 1970s, has revealed clear wounds that were not recorded in the post-mortem following his death in 1977.

Prosecutor Ireneusz Kunert, from the Krakow branch of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), which investigates crimes committed under the Nazi occupation and communist rule of Poland, told media that “the wounds were noticed on other parts of the body than were documented earlier.”

Under the auspices of the IPN the murder case continues, with the exhumation of Stanislaw Pyjas taking place on April 20. After being inspected by the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Krakow, it was transported to Wroclaw.

After the summer recess, experts from Wroclaw, Bydgoszcz and Gdansk are to present a special report to the prosecution on the remains of Stanislaw Pyjas, who, as a student, was an opposition activist in the late 1970s.

On June 16, the body was reburied in a graveyard in Gilowice, in the region of Silesia, against the wishes of Pyjas’ family, which demanded further inspection of the body.

Pyjas’ sister, Alicja Przybysz, has requested an experiment using the same firearms used in the 1970s to determine whether the marks are similar to those recently found on her brother’s body, which would imply that he was shot in the head by the communist secret police.

Unofficial reports say that the prosecution is unlikely to decide on such a move, as the experiment would have to be conducted on another corpse from a mortuary.

The body of Stanislaw Pyjas was found in a tenement on Krakow’s Szewska street on May 7, 1977. Communist prosecutors at the time proclaimed that the student fell down some stairs after drinking too much alcohol.

The Pyjas case came back to light several times in the early 1990s, but was regularly dropped due to lack of evidence, although it was confirmed then that Stanislaw Pyjas was beaten to death.

Since May 2008 the Krakow branch of IPN has been in charge of the case. More than 20 new witnesses have testified in the case, and it was affirmed that Pyjas was in fact murdered, not just 'beaten'. (jb)

Source: Rzeczpospolita