Unprecedented, but Unchanging

The arrest, public trial and sentencing of four Polish secret-police officers for the murder of a popular, outspoken Roman Catholic priest is unprecedented in a Communist country, where security forces traditionally operate with impunity. Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that the episode heralds a new era of police restraint or greater official tolerance for dissenting opinions.

Jerzy Popieluszko, a vocal supporter of the outlawed Solidarity labor union, was kidnaped on Oct. 19, savagely beaten by his captors and dumped into a reservoir. Three secret-police officers were quickly arrested, and they implicated a secret-police colonel.

In response to national outrage, Poland’s Communist government condemned the murder and suggested that the accused men were part of a plot that was intended to provoke violence and to cause trouble for President Wojciech Jaruzelski. But the trial shed no light on whether influential officials had been involved. The judge concluded that the policemen were motivated by a hatred of the priest and frustration at what they saw as overly lenient treatment of the church by the government.

The 14-to-25-year sentences imposed by the court are remarkable, especially considering the widespread assumption in Poland that the Soviet KGB was involved in the crime.

The Soviet news agency Tass, in reporting the sentencing of the defendants Thursday, made clear the Soviet view that the real culprits were Catholic clergymen whom it accused of using the pulpit for “anti-socialist and anti-Soviet attacks.”

By prosecuting the secret policemen in seeming defiance of Soviet wishes Jaruzelski may have enhanced his not-very-high standing with the Polish people. But the regime has pointedly discouraged any idea that the episode will lead to greater tolerance for pro-Solidarity elements. The trial itself featured verbal attacks on the church. There have been hints of new legal curbs on priests who say things that annoy the government.

Meanwhile, prosecutors are suggesting that the convicted secret-police colonel was really a Western agent. And the government is said to have decided not to investigate reports of additional political kidnapings.

The bottom line is that in the eyes of the government the major crime of the policemen was to act against the interests of top political authorities instead of on their behalf. The trial and conviction of the culprits serves as a warning to the security police to remember who is boss; it may also have been intended as an act of calculated defiance against blatant Soviet meddling. Unhappily, though, it is unlikely to change the determination of the Communist authorities to keep the Poles on a short leash.