The Polish Police refuted claims that a letter dated 29 October regarding plans to equip the riot police with machine guns and night-vision goggles from 2-8 November had anything to do with the next day’s events. Liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government attempted what the conservative opposition deems a judicial coup against the Constitutional Tribunal less than 24 hours afterwards. Speculation has therefore swirled that he permitted the riot police to use lethal force to put down anti-coup protests.
According to leading conservative newspaper Rzeczpospolita, the operation to forcibly install several new justices after suspending the Tribunal’s president and vice-president was meticulously planned. Launching it on a Friday evening after sunset was meant to ensure that the two suspended justices weren’t at the premises. Moreover, this particular Friday comes just before All Saints’ Day on 1 November, when most Poles travel back to their ancestral villages to tend to their ancestors’ graves.
One of Rzeczpospolita’s sources said that “The prevailing assumption was that people would have no interest in the Tribunal, that a handful of retirees would remain, and most would go to their graves and homes.” Further raising the odds of success was that conservative President Karol Nawrocki was scheduled to fly to Africa that night. Per the outlet, the plotters didn’t expect that he’d turn his flight around and enter the Tribunal shortly after midnight, nor did they anticipate the large-scale protests.
Returning to the letter from the introduction, Rzeczpospolita reported that it cited “the operational situation in the country” as the reason for equipping the riot police with machine guns and night-vision goggles from 2-8 November, not “sabotage” like the Polish Police later claimed. The outlet also pointed out that the riot police don’t deal with sabotage and alleged that “the police themselves don’t believe in [the sabotage pretext].” “The content suggests an attempt to conceal the true purpose” per a source.
One of their other sources speculated that “Potential Russian intelligence agencies may want to exploit the situation to carry out some act of sabotage or diversion. This is the perfect opportunity. I suspect this order may be related to such information or suspicions, rather than a desire to use weapons at the Tribunal.” Be that as it may, that line of thinking still presupposes large-scale protests sparked by the next day’s events, which were only known to three leading police officers per Rzeczpospolita’s report.
It’s also worth pointing out that 2 November, the first day that riot police across the country will be equipped with machine guns and night-vision goggles, falls on the Monday after this year’s All Saints’ Day when Poles will have returned to their cities from their ancestral villages. Correspondingly, the judicial coup plotters might have reasonably expected large-scale protests to commence on that day, ergo the timing for outfitting the riot police as described on spurious “sabotage”-related grounds.
While it can’t be known for sure, and there’s no guarantee that indisputable evidence will emerge, Tusk might have tacitly permitted the riot police to use lethal force to put down anti-coup protests. The official narrative alleging a high risk of Russian “sabotage” in the week after the attempted judicial coup that came the day after the letter could be exploited to falsely justify firing into the crowds to “stop Russian agents” that supposedly “pose a threat”. It’s all too suspicious and deserves to be investigated.
