Word: popieluszko
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Grzegorz Piotrowski, the cashiered secret-police captain who was in turn arrogant and stony-faced during the six-week trial, finally broke down and wept last week. Moments before, Judge Artur Kujawa had sentenced Piotrowski to 25 years in prison for the brutal murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko. As Kujawa dryly explained his conduct of the trial, Piotrowski dropped his head to the wooden railing of the dock and wept...
...remorse but relief, for he could have fared much worse: the state prosecutor had requested the death penalty. Also sentenced to long terms for aiding Piotrowski in the abduction and killing of Popieluszko last October were two subordinates in the security forces, Leszek Pekala and Waldemar Chmielewski. Pekala, who drove the kidnap car, received 15 years, and Chmielewski, whose stuttering, tear-filled testimony gave the trial some of its most dramatic moments, got 14 years. Adam Pietruszka, the former colonel who flatly denied Piotrowski's accusations that he had encouraged the killing, received a 25-year jail term...
...drew a distinction between Pietruszka and Piotrowski, whom he described as the decision makers, and their subordinates. Kujawa explained that he chose not to order Piotrowski hanged because Polish law states that punishment should seek to educate and frighten the criminal, not simply avenge the crime. Indeed, lawyers representing Popieluszko's family and his driver, Waldemar Chrostowski, at the trial had mentioned the priest's personal opposition to capital punishment. On the day the verdicts were announced, Popieluszko's relatives were not even in court; they had said earlier that they were interested not in the penalties but only...
...comparison between the four defendants and the activist priest incensed auxiliary prosecutors who represent Popieluszko's family and his driver, Waldemar Chrostowski. In his concluding remarks the following day, Edward Wende, the slain priest's longtime attorney, who is representing Popieluszko's brother and the driver, struck back. "I did not think," he said, "that I would be forced to take the stand in the role of defender of the victim. Such a statement by the public prosecutor, which would equate the victim with the hangman without any reason for it, is probably unknown in any court records...
Pietrasinski also made a scathing indictment of Popieluszko and the Roman Catholic Church. Said he: "Father Popieluszko was filled with hatred for socialist Poland. . . . They (the defendants) were extremists just as he (Popieluszko) was an extremist. Thus two extremist attitudes met." Pietrasinski added with subtle cynicism that the aim of the four secret policemen was to discredit Poland's Communist regime. Said he: "They used military uniforms and the financial reserves of the Interior Ministry as if to confirm that terror is being used in Poland. It is known that the kidnaping caused a great resonance. The defendants' act carries...