Poland Rules Out Probe of Political Kidnapings

Polish authorities have formally refused to reopen an investigation into a series of political kidnapings last year in the same area where Father Jerzy Popieluszko was abducted and murdered, according to a leading underground publication.

The government acknowledges that five people reported being kidnaped and terrorized by unknown assailants in and around the northern city of Torun between February and August of last year.

The five, who were released after they were beaten and questioned about their connections with the Solidarity union underground, said there were indications that their assailants had police connections. However, the Torun prosecutor ruled last October that there was no evidence of police involvement.

That ruling came shortly before Popieluszko, the unofficial chaplain of the outlawed Solidarity trade union movement, was abducted a few miles outside Torun on Oct. 19 and killed.

The latest issue of Tygodnik Mazowsze, the Solidarity’s underground’s main Warsaw area news bulletin, says the Torun prosecutor has now rejected appeals from the kidnaping victims to reopen the investigation in light of the arrest of four secret police officers accused of killing the priest.

Decision Dec. 31

The trial of the four officers began Dec. 27 in Torun, 125 miles northwest of Warsaw, and is expected to conclude today. According to the Solidarity bulletin, the Torun prosecutor, in an unpublicized decision Dec. 31, formally rejected appeals to reopen the other kidnaping cases.

“This decision is final,” said the bulletin, which is usually reliable. But there was no immediate confirmation from the prosecutor’s office. The only person known to have been arrested in connection with the five cases was a witness, Stanislaw Smigiel, a Torun electronics engineer jailed in November on charges of aiding Solidarity’s underground radio station.

The five kidnapings followed a consistent pattern similar to that of the priest. The assailants used handcuffs and brandished pistols and other police equipment and on at least one occasion were said to have parked for a long time in front of a district headquarters of the Interior Ministry in Torun, with the victim clumsily blindfolded in the car. (The Interior Ministry controls the police.)

Most victims were reportedly taken into wooded areas outside the city and beaten, threatened with long prison terms or death and questioned about the Solidarity underground.

Leaflet Planted

In one instance, the kidnapers planted a leaflet on the victim before releasing him, identifying themselves as members of an “anti-Solidarity organization” dedicated to eradicating the “cancer” of Solidarity where Poland’s allegedly ineffective security apparatus had failed.

In the trial of the four secret police officers charged with killing Popieluszko, the accused organizer of the killing, Capt. Grzegorz Piotrowski, has offered a similar motivation, contending there was great frustration in the security service at restraints imposed from above on their actions against clergymen suspected of political activity.

The current issue of CDN, another Solidarity news bulletin, reports indications that the security service in Torun knew within minutes of Popieluszko’s abduction, even before the priest’s driver, Waldemar Chrostowski, who escaped from the speeding kidnap car, had notified police.

Quoting what it called leaks from the security service, the Jan. 24 issue of CDN said this supported earlier information suggesting that the priest’s abduction was coordinated with the Torun office of the security service.

Sent to Clinic

Reacting to the news of the driver’s escape, the bulletin said, the Torun office “issued an immediate order to find the driver, and SB (security service) functionaries were sent to the emergency clinic to await Chrostowski’s arrival there.”

Any intention the police may have had to silence the driver, the bulletin said, was foiled when he ordered the ambulance taking him to the clinic to stop first at a Torun church, where he made a full report of the kidnaping to a parish priest, Father Jozef Nowakowski, before accepting medical treatment.

The same bulletin claims that an Interior Ministry colonel from the northwestern Polish city of Slupsk has been questioned about a “mysterious visit” he allegedly made to the village of Przysiek, outside Torun, the night before Popieluszko was seized there by three of the officers now on trial.

Quoting what it called leaks from the security service, the Jan. 24 issue of CDN said this supported earlier information suggesting that the priest’s abduction was coordinated with the Torum office.