Revelations have emerged that Judge Tomasz Szmydt, who on Monday fled to Belarus and requested political asylum in that country, had been closely monitored by Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) as well as Poland’s counterintelligence services, which were gathering evidence of his spying. At the end of the operation, however, something went wrong.
According to unofficial information acquired by news outlet Onet, Szmydt had for several years maintained contact not only with Belarusian intelligence officers but also those of Russia.
The Polish government has ordered an immediate review of all the classified information to which Judge Szmydt had access to as a result of his job. He was not an ordinary judge at the Administrative Court in Warsaw but had access to classified materials, including those of critical importance to national security. It has already been established that he was responsible for making decisions on public officials’ access to NATO secrets and other classified materials.
On Monday, Szmydt appeared at a press conference in Minsk, where he announced that he was resigning as a judge and seeking asylum because of his opposition to the Polish government and objection to what he described as Polish warmongering against Belarus and Russia. Should he ever be caught or return to Poland, Szmydt would face treason charges, leading to sentences of a minimum of eight years and potentially a maximum life sentence.
Polish politicians have been saying that the country’s intelligence services should have put Szmydt under tighter supervision but security expert and historian Prof. Sławomir Cenckiewicz has pointed out that the Polish legal system does not envisage judges being put under the scrutiny of the security apparatus.
Members of parliament are now arguing that this is a privilege serving as a loophole in the law, which must be closed for the sake of national security. According to the deputy chair of the security services’ commission in the Polish parliament, Mirosław Suchoń, the situation in which over 12,000 judges are not verified on security grounds in any manner is not fit for purpose.
