The court in Katowice, southern Poland, has sentenced Romuald Cieslak, head of a special squad of the Motorized Reserves of the Citizens' Militia (ZOMO) and charged with orchestrating the pacification of the Wujek coal mine, to ten years in prison, while his underlings received sentences to up to seven years. 

By virtue of the amnesty law all the sentences were commuted, so the defendants will only serve six and three and a half years respectively. None were present at the final hearing. 

Members of the killed coal miners' families, many of whom served as auxiliary prosecutors, welcomed the sentence with an applause. 

Immediately after the sentence was made public a wave of comments rolled through the Polish media. 

"This case is a disgrace to the Polish judiciary", said Zbigniew Romaszewski, a former opposition activist and a Law and Justice (PiS) senator now, in a conversation with Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza. Romaszewski finds it deeply saddening that it took 26 years to sentence the perpetrators of the Wujek pacification. 

Henryk Wujec, also a former opposition leader, expressed a different opinion. In a conversation with the private news station TVN24, Wujec said that the sentence was just and that he himself was grateful that the trial took place at all. 

Romuald Cieslak. and those under his command were first sentenced last year by a court of the first appeal in Katowice, southern Poland, to 11 and between two and a half years imprisonment respectively.

After Jan Ludwiczak, head of the Solidarity trade union in the Wujek coal mine, was arrested and General Wojciech Jaruzelski announced martial law in Poland 13 December 1981, miners from the Wujek mine went on strike, announcing they would only go back to work after Ludwiczak was released. Two days later the coal mine was surrounded by police and army units. The miners started to sing the national anthem, refusing to terminate the strike. Militia units entered the coal mine and threw tear-gas grenades at the miners who threw back stones, at which point the police opened fire.