Lech Walesa: photo - PR

An appeal court in Gdansk has ruled against noted former dissident and journalist Krzysztof Wyszkowski, calling on him to apologise to Lech Walesa for citing the Solidarity leader as a onetime communist security services collaborator.

Claims that Walesa acted as an informer to the secret police prior to the advent of Solidarity have dogged the former leader for many years.

In June 2008, two historians from the state sponsored Institute of National Remembrance, published a weighty tome, Lech Walesa: A Contribution to the Biography, asserting that the Solidarity leader had functioned as an informer in the 1970s, under the codename 'Bolek'.

Wyszkowski had himself said as much in 2005, and the case between he and Walesa has been in court three times since then. Walesa effectively won the first trial, but in August 2010, a Gdansk regional court concluded that more material had come to light, and that as a public figure, Walesa had to be open to various opinions about his legacy. Walesa was ordered to pay the court's costs.

Today's ruling by the appeal court is a notable coup for Walesa, who has always vigorously denied the accusations. Historians are divided on the subject. (nh)

Source: TVP, Gazeta Wyborcza