WARSAW (Reuters) – Polish lawmakers voted on Friday to lift nationalist opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s immunity from prosecution, meaning he can face charges relating to a scuffle during a commemorative event for an air disaster.
Activist Zbigniew Komosa accuses Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, of assault, saying he hit him twice in the face during an anniversary commemoration of the air crash in Smolensk, Russia, in which Kaczynski’s twin brother and president of Poland, Lech, and 95 others were killed in 2010.
Kaczynski said Komosa had repeatedly brought wreaths with offensive inscriptions to the Smolensk monument in Warsaw and that he was acting “in self-defence”.
The crash in thick fog near Smolensk was Poland’s worst air disaster since World War Two and stunned the country. It also deepened political divisions and revived suspicions about Russia, Warsaw’s former Cold War master.
Kaczynski and his supporters believe the crash was not caused by pilot error, as concluded in an official investigation by Poland’s centrist government, but by foul play and Russian interference. Russia denied any involvement.
Kaczynski’s immunity as a lawmaker has been stripped only regarding Komosa’s charges.
(Reporting by Alan Charlish and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk; editing by Mark Heinrich)
