The suspect in the 2024 murder of a Polish soldier, Mateusz Sitek, was named by Polish prosecutors as Moroccan migrant Mohamed Addamrou.
While the charges against him have been pending for some time, those investigating temporarily suspended their activities on May 22, 2026, stating:
The Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office emphasises that all state services and agencies have been engaged in procedural activities and in establishing the circumstances of this case. They regard identifying the perpetrator, locating him and bringing him before Polish justice as a matter of honour.
Naming Addamrou in public is likely a tactic to encourage his extradition from Belarus.
On May 28th, 2024, Sitek—a sergeant in the 1st Warsaw Armoured Brigade—was stabbed in the chest through a border fence near the village of Dubicze Cerkiewne. He died a week later in hospital.
After interviewing 140 witnesses and gathering forensic evidence, Addamrou was identified and charged with murdering a public official in July last year. By December 2025, an extradition request was submitted to Minsk.
Moscow ally Belarus seems unlikely to cooperate. It has been accused of ‘hybrid warfare,’ sometimes conducted by encouraging widespread illegal migration from Africa and the Middle East across its shared border with Poland.
The killing caused outrage across Poland and brought the question of inward migration into sharp focus. Border powers were strengthened.
Last month, a Polish soldier was acquitted of “abusing his powers” and “threatening the lives or health of others,” charges brought after he fired shots towards a group of migrant intruders who illegally crossed the border from Belarus (in an incident that happened prior to Sitek’s death).
