Former Solidarity activists are accusing President Bronislaw Komorowski of “dishonouring one of Poland's highest decorations” by awarding a former communist-era judge the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Resituta.

President Komorowski presented Zbigniew Pannert the medal on 24 January for his “outstanding services in the public domain in aid of common justice.”

However, in an open letter to the president, former opposition activists from Bialystok in northern Poland have complained that Pannert was a key figure in local repressions during the martial law period in the early 1980s.

Calling themselves the Club of the Imprisoned, the Interned and the Repressed in Bialystok (WIR), the protesters have noted that as a result of Pannert's work as a prosecutor, two Solidarity members were sentenced, Lech Kraszewski and Ryszard Szczesny.

Kraszewski was sentenced to three years in prison for handing out flyers calling for the release of political prisoners.

Reflecting on the award, Krzysztof Wasilewski, leader of the current protests made by WIR, says that the opinion of the general public regarding Pannert is unequivocal, and that Komorowski has “disgraced himself and the order.”

Professor Tomasz Nalecz, an advisor to the president, has replied that Komorowski's chancellery does not have the possibility to verify all the proposals for the order, and as a matter of course, the the president trusts the recommendations made by the Ministry of Justice.

The president's press office added that the proposal for Pannert related to his role in the twentieth anniversary of the foundation of Poland's Court of Appeal.

The Cross of the Order of Polonia Resituta has five levels. Previous recipients have included Lech Walesa, General Wladyslaw Anders and Wladyslaw Szpilman, famous as “the Pianist” in the movie by Roman Polanski. (nh/pg)