Polish Police Raid Meeting Attended by Walesa

Polish police Wednesday raided a meeting in a Gdansk apartment attended by Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, one of Walesa’s aides said. Seven prominent Solidarity activists were detained but Walesa was released, the aide said.

About 20 plainclothes and uniformed policemen forced their way into the apartment in the Baltic port city to break up the meeting, said Grzegorz Grzelak, the aide.

Grzelak, contacted by telephone at Walesa’s apartment in Gdansk, said the seven other union activists taking part in the strategy meeting were “taken away in cars in an unknown direction.”

“We don’t have any information about the detained,” said Grzelak. “Walesa was set free immediately. He is now at home but unavailable.”

Detainees Listed

Among those detained were Solidarity leaders from throughout Poland, including Bogdan Lis of Gdansk, Wladyslaw Frasyniuk of Wroclaw, Stanislaw Handzlik of Krakow, Janusz Palubicki of Poznan and Adam Michnik of Warsaw, a prominent union adviser and leader of the workers’ rights group known as KOR, Grzelak said.

Also detained were two other Gdansk unionists, Jacek Merkel and Mariusz Wilk, Grzelak said.

Walesa and the outlawed union’s underground leadership have called for a nationwide 15-minute work stoppage Feb. 28 to protest government plans to raise food prices.

“The meeting was designed for a current appraisal of the situation in the country,” Grzelak said. He would not elaborate.

2 Hours After Start

The meeting took place in a private apartment in Gdansk’s Zaspa district, where Walesa also lives, said Grzelak. Police entered the apartment shortly before 5 p.m., less than two hours after the meeting began, he said.

“There were about 20 people who entered the flat, most of them plainclothes and some of them uniformed,” said Grzelak. “Lech Walesa, who was present in the flat, was set free with his driver, Jerzy Trzcinski,” he said.

Police later searched Lis’ apartment, his brother, Waldemar, said in a telephone interview. He said police told him his brother was detained.

The Gdansk prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation of Lis and Michnik, who were released from prison under a government amnesty last year, for endorsing the strike appeal.

It was the first strike call by Solidarity leaders since November, 1982, when a planned nationwide strike to protest the outlawing of the independent trade union failed to generate widespread support.