Eighty seven year-old General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who declared martial law in December 1981, is back in court for his role in the infamous crackdown against the Solidarity movement.

The  legal process originally began in September 2008, but it was adjourned precisely a year later, owing to the poor health of one of the defendants.

Nine men were charged with responsibility for the crackdown in 1981 which saw 5000 people interned and close to 100 fatalities.

The principal defendants are General Jaruzelski, General Czeslaw Kiszczak – the former Minister of Internal Affairs who ordered the brutal suppression of a strike in the Wujek coalmine following the outbreak of martial law which resulted the deaths of nine striking miners - and Stanislaw Kania, the General Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party.

The charges were brought forward by the state-sponsored Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). The defendants could face ten years in prison of found guilty.

It has been reported that a number of high profile witnesses are in line to be called. Stanislaw Kania has asked lawyers to call on the then Solidarity chief Lech Walesa and the present editor-in-chief of the Gazeta Wyborcza daily Adam Michnik.

Jaruzelski has maintained that he initiated martial law to protect Poland from a possible intervention by the Soviet Union.

Documents released under the Boris Yeltsin Russian presidency in the 1990s suggest that on 29 October, 1981, General Secretary of the Soviet Union Yuri Andropov refused to send troops to Poland if protests against the planned crackdown got out of control. (nh/pg)