Ex-Polish President Testifies at Trial

Testifying for the first time at his murder trial, Poland’s former Communist leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski denied Thursday that he ordered troops to fire on striking shipyard workers during 1970 protests.

“The charges against me are groundless,” Jaruzelski, 78, told the court. “The indictment contains fundamental loopholes, pure mistakes, manipulations and even pure lies. I would like to state here that during the tragic events of December 1970, I did not act against the constitution, did not issue an order to use arms, did not commit a crime.”

Jaruzelski, who has been living in comfortable retirement in Warsaw, appeared in court with six co-defendants. All are accused of “supervising” murder and issuing illegal orders for the use of firearms leading to death and injury. They could face life in prison if convicted.

The 1970 strikes in Gdansk and at other Baltic shipyards were triggered by anger over price increases for food, coal and clothing. The indictment is for 44 deaths, but historians agree that at least 56 strikers died. Some of those killed were protesting peacefully or trying to go to the shipyards when they were shot.

Jaruzelski, who was defense minister at the time, declared Thursday that during the crackdown he was bypassed in the chain of command.

“I acted to limit the painful effects of those events,” Jaruzelski said, “and later contributed to such political changes that eventually stopped the dangerous broadening of the conflict and the seeking of a solution by force.”

Jaruzelski, who entered the courtroom using a cane and wearing dark glasses, said the trial is marked by “bias and a tendentious presentation of the events.”

Prosecutors charge that although the order for soldiers to use weapons to put down the strike was issued by the late Communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka, Jaruzelski must have consented to it in his role as defense minister.

In December 1981, as general secretary of Poland’s Communist Party, Jaruzelski declared a martial law crackdown on the anti-Communist Solidarity labor movement, which had developed partly as a result of the bloodily suppressed 1970 protests.

In 1989, he reached a deal with Solidarity that set the stage for a peaceful transition from communism. As part of that deal, he served as Poland’s president from 1989 to 1990.

Polish society is deeply split in its assessment of Jaruzelski, and many on both sides see the trial as a fight over how he will go down in Polish history.

Former Sen. Piotr Andrzejewski, who is participating as a representative of victims, said during a break in Thursday’s session that the trial should make it possible to “investigate the historical process, as close to the truth as possible, and then . . . to find out who were the people who bear criminal responsibility.”

“This trial could have a purifying effect for our consciousness, for dealing with the past,” he said. “One cannot look into the future without first dealing with the past.”

Andrzejewski said he found it interesting that much of Jaruzelski’s argument Thursday focused on a legalistic defense. “We see a very well-constructed reaction by omitting or pushing aside facts and concentrating on legal construction which could justify the reaction of the then-functioning government,” he said.

Jaruzelski supporters who came to watch the trial expressed outrage that a former president is being treated this way.

“What is happening here is a scandal,” said retired Col. Henryk Adamowicz, 83, who added that he has known Jaruzelski since both fought against the Nazis in World War II. “They want to destroy the general. The prosecutors treat him in a horrible way. And we are speaking here of a Polish president.”

Another veteran, retired Gen. Wlodzimierz Kopikowski, 83, declared that “those who are the defendants today should be treated as national heroes because they prevented civil war.”

Legal experts have predicted that the trial might take three years or more. Court documents list about 1,100 witnesses who might be called in the case, and statements from more than 2,000 others have been taken and could be read in court. None of the defendants are imprisoned, but all are elderly and some are in poor health.

Jaruzelski is reported to have kidney problems and high blood pressure.

He declared Thursday that he did not expect to have the last word in the trial, implying that he thought he might not live to see its end.

Ela Kasprzycka of The Times’ Warsaw Bureau contributed to this report.