Word: waldemar
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
...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 in seeing justice done...
...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...
...prosecutor recommended that each of Piotrowski's partners, Co-Defendants Waldemar Chmielewski and Leszek Pekala, receive a sentence of 25 years, the maximum term under Polish law. The men, he said, were following the orders of their superior. The prosecutor also recommended a sentence of 25 years for the fourth defendant, ex-Colonel Adam Pietruszka, who took no physical part in the crime but is accused of having encouraged Piotrowski in its commission. The prosecutor's recommendations are expected to be approved by Presiding Judge Artur Kujawa and his four co-jurists this week...
...conceal his own part in the kidnaping and killing, Piotrowski has based his hope to escape the death sentence on the earlier autopsy conclusion that the priest had strangled on his bonds. Popieluszko was trussed by Piotrowski's assistants, co-defendants and former secret police officers Leszek Pekala and Waldemar Chmielewski. By suggesting that the savage beating contributed to Popieluszko's death, Byrdy may have destroyed Piotrowski's only defense...