Photo: Gov.pl / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 pl
Polish police have detained a man suspected of planning to assassinate Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, hours after the government said it had received credible information about possible attacks on the two leaders. Tusk confirmed the arrest on Sunday, October 11, and thanked officers for their “swift and decisive action”.
Traced through his online posts
Interior Minister Marcin Kierwinski told the public broadcaster TVP Info that the suspect, a man of around 60, was arrested in Lower Silesia in south-western Poland. He said the security services found him by carefully analysing content posted on the internet, and that his contacts and online activity were now being examined. Officials have said the man is a Polish national.
According to Interior Ministry spokeswoman Karolina Galecka, the alarm was raised when the State Protection Service, which guards ministers, passed police an email containing information about the planned attack. She said searches were continuing at the man’s home and that the information about him would be verified.
‘Deadly serious’
Police, the State Protection Service and Poland’s internal security agency held a special meeting on Sunday to discuss the case. Jacek Dobrzynski, spokesman for the minister who coordinates the special services, said officials were treating the threat as “deadly serious”. He added that threats against Polish officials had become more frequent, but that in this case there was “a strong likelihood” they could have been carried out.
Kierwinski said it was probably too early to talk of any foreign involvement. He described the suspect as someone who appeared to come from very radical circles and who had built up radical contacts with various people online. Officials did not immediately say what charges the man could face.
A tense few weeks for Poland
The arrest comes at a nervous time. Poland, a member of both NATO and the European Union, has been on high alert after a string of stabbings over the past week, which Tusk on Thursday condemned as a “cult of violence”. Police said on Sunday that nearly 64,000 institutions had been inspected and 117 people detained after violent incidents at schools.
In September, Polish intelligence arrested a 17-year-old Nazi sympathiser suspected of planning an attack on a school and a mosque, and two other minors were later detained in the same case. Warsaw, one of Ukraine’s firmest backers since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, has also repeatedly warned of Russian sabotage and so-called hybrid attacks on its soil, charges Moscow denies.
What happens next
Investigators are now working through the suspect’s online contacts and the material seized from his home to establish how far any plan had gone and whether anyone else was involved. Tusk, who has led the government since 2023 after an earlier spell as prime minister from 2007 to 2014, served as president of the European Council between 2014 and 2019.
