Warsaw, Jan 10, (dpa/GNA) – Former Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kaminski, who was arrested and imprisoned late Tuesday on abuse of power charges, announced he was going on hunger strike.
Kaminski, a member of the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, wrote on the social media platform X on Wednesday that his conviction and two-year prison sentence was political retaliation.
On Tuesday, when Kaminski and his former state secretary Maciej Wasik had been due to begin their sentences, and as police began enforcing a warrant for their arrest, right-wing President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally, invited the duo to his palace.
After several hours inside, the PiS politicians were finally arrested there.
The incident marked a major escalation in the tensions between the new centre-left government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and the camp of the voted-out conservative nationalist PiS party.
Tusk accused Duda of providing the ex-ministers with refuge from the police, and obstructing their imprisonment.
GNA