Poland’s former justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, has had his diplomatic passport annulled after prosecutors filed 26 charges against him and signalled that he could face a European Arrest Warrant if he refuses to return to the country. Ziobro, who is currently in Hungary, has also said through his lawyer that he is willing to be questioned in Belgium, where he had been receiving medical treatment.
Poland’s current justice minister, Waldemar Żurek, has insisted that Ziobro cannot decide where he will be questioned. If he does not come back to Poland, Żurek says he will become subject to an EU-wide arrest warrant.
Prosecutors accuse Ziobro of leading an organised criminal group and misusing money from the Justice Fund, which was created to help victims of crime. They say the fund was used to buy the Pegasus spyware system, which was allegedly deployed against domestic political opponents.
Ziobro rejects the accusations, saying the case is a politically driven witch hunt, motivated by revenge for the corruption investigations he once pursued involving figures close to Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who met Ziobro in Budapest last month, has publicly backed this view, accusing the Tusk government of conducting a “political witch hunt.” Hungary has already granted asylum to Ziobro’s former deputy, Marcin Romanowski, preventing Poland from enforcing an earlier arrest warrant.
Ziobro’s supporters say the parliamentary vote in early November to strip him of immunity—driven through by Poland’s left-liberal governing coalition—is further proof of an escalating campaign against the conservative opposition.
