Former Polish minister convicted over deaths

POLAND:A FORMER Polish interior minister was convicted yesterday over the deaths of nine miners killed during a 1981 communist crackdown on the pro-democracy Solidarity movement.

Gen Czeslaw Kiszczak was found guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of the miners, who were shot dead in December 1981 when riot police stormed the Wujek coal mine and broke up a strike that had been called in defiance of recently imposed martial law.

Gen Kiszczak - who also became Poland's last communist prime minister during less than three weeks in office in 1989 - escaped a jail sentence after the judge ruled that he had not authorised the use of firearms against the miners and had tried to avoid casualties.

Last month, an appeals court upheld the convictions of 14 former security service officers who opened fire on the workers at Wujek, who barricaded themselves into the mine in protest at martial law and the jailing of Solidarity leaders.

They were the first of about 100 people to die under martial law, which was lifted in July 1983. Prosecutors had sought a four-year suspended prison term for Gen Kiszczak (82), who was found guilty in 2004 of authorising the shooting of the nine miners who were killed and 25 others who were injured in the police raid.

A court of appeal ordered a retrial however, finding that Gen Kiszczak had not been proven to have broken communist-era law, which he helped impose as the head of an interior ministry which controlled the infamous SB secret police and Zomo riot police.

Gen Kiszczak was also a member of the widely-loathed Military Council of National Salvation, which ran Poland under martial law and was led by prime minister Wojciech Jaruzelski.

Gen Jaruzelski (85) is currently facing trial for "leading an armed organisation of a criminal character" and "communist crimes" which include the imposition of martial law.

His trial is due to recommence after a court overturned a ruling, sought by Gen Jaruzelski's lawyers, which obliged prosecutors to interview the likes of former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and former US president Jimmy Carter.