Former Polish justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro was forcibly detained by police at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport on Monday morning, September 29th, and escorted to parliament, deepening a political and legal crisis in the country.
The move is yet another chapter in the left-liberal government’s efforts to pursue its conservative political opponents.
Ziobro, who served as justice minister under the previous Law and Justice (PiS) government, landed in Warsaw around 10:30 a.m. on a flight from Brussels. Police officers were waiting at the aircraft door, blocking the exit.
“In a lawless state, one can hardly expect anything else,” Ziobro remarked as he was intercepted. He urged officers to allow passengers to disembark, adding: “We cannot treat people like this; they must be respected.”
The operation was conducted under an order from the Warsaw District Court to bring Ziobro before the parliamentary commission investigating the Pegasus spyware scandal.
The Donald Tusk-led current government has accused PiS of using Pegasus, the Israeli-made surveillance software, to spy on opposition politicians during the stint of the previous conservative cabinet, but PiS has rejected these claims and said that the probe was part of Tusk’s witch hunt.
Since coming to power, the Tusk government has arrested opposition MPs and former ministers, withheld state funding from PiS, carried out the forceful takeover of public media and the prosecutor’s office.
Ziobro was escorted to a waiting vehicle and driven to parliament, where the Pegasus committee convened at noon.
Ziobro has ignored eight previous summonses, arguing that the investigative commission itself is unlawful. He has cited rulings by the Constitutional Tribunal (TK), which found the commission unconstitutional. “The Constitutional Tribunal has ruled that my detention is illegal,” Ziobro told officers, warning them they could face legal consequences.
However, Tusk’s government refuses to recognise these rulings, arguing that the tribunal itself is illegitimate because some of its judges were “unlawfully” appointed during PiS’s time in power.
Monday’s events highlight the dangerous politicisation of Poland’s justice system under Tusk.
“The dismantling of the rule of law in Poland by Donald Tusk’s government has been ongoing ever since it came to power in 2023,” wrote Artur Ciechanowicz, Polish correspondent for europeanconservative.com, earlier this year. He pointed to the administration’s refusal to publish TK rulings and its arbitrary recognition of judges and institutions.
The European Commission, once vocal in condemning PiS for alleged rule-of-law breaches, has remained conspicuously silent on Tusk’s use of lawfare against the opposition. This double standard risks undermining the EU’s credibility as a so-called guardian of democratic norms.
