Poland Warns Dissidents in Crackdown on Solidarity Unit

Polish police Saturday ended a nationwide crackdown on a militant Solidarity splinter group after warning members about their activities and seizing anti-government leaflets, the official PAP news agency said.

Authorities also freed from jail nine people held for about a year without trial, PAP said.

Solidarity activists and members of other opposition groups were given warnings and illegal publications and printing equipment confiscated, but no further action was taken against them, PAP said.

“On April 24-25, security police and police carried out a nationwide prevention operation to reveal the structures of the so-called Fighting Solidarity, as well as some illegal groups, their activists and persons supporting them,” PAP said.

Fighting Solidarity, a splinter branch of the outlawed Solidarity labor movement, is led by Kornel Moreawiecki, who operates in hiding and advocates a more aggressive struggle against the government as compared to Lech Walesa, who urges moderation.

In a separate move, PAP said that Interior Minister Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak was freeing nine people, jailed for alleged “terrorist” offenses, under the terms of an amnesty announced last July. Solidarity has always maintained that the nine were political offenders.

‘Humanitarian Reasons’

“Gen. Kiszczak has asked Poland’s prosecutor general to apply the benefits of the law of July 17, 1986 . . . to seven persons deprived of freedom from Krakow and to two from Gdansk who attempted to commit acts bearing traits of terrorism,” PAP said.

The news agency said their release was “guided by humanitarian reasons.”

It did not identify the nine, but the two from Gdansk were believed to be Andrzej Cybulski and Ryszard Balewski, charged with setting fire to government officials’ apartments in 1986.

The seven from Krakow were believed to be members of a group that allegedly was planning tear-gas attacks on official May Day paraders last year.