Poland Arrests Seven Leaders of Solidarity

Secret police today arrested seven leading Solidarity activists holding a clandestine strategy meeting led by Lech Walesa, the founder of the outlawed union, Walesa said.

Walesa, who was allowed to return home, said in a telephone interview from his home in Gdansk that more than 20 security police broke up the secret meeting in an apartment in the northern city.

“I was allowed to go home. The police were very polite but they told us the meeting was illegal,” he said.

He said the seven activists--including Wroclaw regional union leader Wladyslaw Frasyniuk, top underground union leader Bogdan Lis and leading Solidarity adviser Adam Michnik--were put in separate cars and driven away.

Destination Unknown

Walesa said he did not know where the men were taken.

Solidarity, the first independent union in a communist country, was banned during martial law in 1982.

In another development, a court sentenced jailed Solidarity leader Andrzej Gwiazda to a further two months for failing to show his identity card to police, family sources said.

Gwiazda, a former deputy to Walesa, was jailed Dec. 17 for three months for taking part in a pro-Solidarity demonstration in Gdansk marking the 14th anniversary of riots on the Baltic coast.

His wife, Joanna, said Gwiazda was sentenced to a further two months by a court in the town of Jastrzebie Zdroj in southern Poland.

She said her husband had visited friends in the town Dec. 7 and was stopped by police after leaving their apartment but refused to show his identity card.

“The police did not detain my husband then, but now he has been sentenced to a further two months in jail,” she said.