HD in Poland conflicts with President Duda – rescinds the amnesty

The case concerns Mariusz Kaminski, the current interior minister and head of the intelligence service, who was sentenced to three years in prison in 2015 for abuse of power as head of the state anti-corruption office. His deputy and two other officials were also convicted.

The three appealed the verdict, but President Andrzej Duda pardoned him that same year before the case could be decided in a higher court.

That the Supreme Court has now revoked the president’s pardon and demanded a new trial of the case is described as “surprising” and “rarely independent” because it runs counter to Duda’s conservative, nationalist Law and Justice party, which has worked for years to achieve more control over the judiciary.

The question is though Complex because the criticized legal reform that the Polish government initiated after the 2015 elections caused chaos in the judiciary.

The government succeeded in gaining control of the Constitutional Court, which ruled last week that the Supreme Court had no right to exercise judicial review of presidential pardons.

For his part, Supreme Court Justice Piotr Merrick disagreed, saying, “The Supreme Court considers that the ruling of the Constitutional Court…had no legal consequences.”

last few days The Polish government faced several setbacks. On Monday, the European Court of Justice ruled that Poland’s controversial judicial reform in 2019 was inconsistent with EU law.

The day before, an estimated 500,000 protesters had gathered on the streets of Warsaw in what was described as the largest anti-government demonstration in the country since the fall of communism.

Polish state media were criticized for their coverage of the demonstration. The state television company TVP is said to have, among other things, downplayed the scale of the protest, calling it a “hate march”.