A former communist-era riot police officer, accused of beating a student to death in Warsaw in 1983, will probably escape justice as his case has now officially expired.

Ireneusz Kościuk was one of the officers accused of killing 19-year-old Grzegorz Przemyk, son of a well known opposition activist and poet Barbara Sadowska in 1983. The high school graduate was detained by communist police and battered to death at the police headquarters, it has been alleged.

The Supreme Court has now overturned an appeal for cassation of a verdict which declared the murder case to be discontinued due to expiration.

“It’s a failure of the Polish legal system,” said Judge Małgorzata Gierszon.

Investigations carried out before the fall of the communist regime in 1989 failed to result in administering punishment on the individuals responsible for the crime. In 1984, the suspects were acquitted while the court sentenced innocent paramedics, charged with negligence allegedly leading to the young man’s demise.

The case returned before the courts in 1989. The last in a series of trials, resulted in an eight-year imprisonment sentence for Ireneusz Kościuk. The verdict was overturned by the Appeal Court in Warsaw, which ruled the crime expired.

The alleged murder committed by Ireneusz Kościuk was a a crime under the communist regime and as such has no expiry date, claims former prosecutor general and justice minister Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, who had filed the appeal.  (ab)