WARSAW (Reuters) -A former Polish deputy justice minister who was detained in a probe into the misuse of public funds was released late on Tuesday after the president of a European rights assembly said he had immunity as a member of the body.
The pro-European government of Donald Tusk says it has opened the way for prosecutors to investigate wrongdoing under the previous administration that would previously have been covered up, but the Warsaw court’s decision to free Marcin Romanowski marks a setback for these efforts.
Opposition lawmakers including Romanowski have accused the government of engaging in a politically motivated witchhunt.
Poland’s parliament stripped Romanowski of his immunity as a lawmaker on Friday. His lawyer argued that he was also protected by immunity resulting from his membership of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
Prosecutors dismissed this argument. However, the president of the assembly, Theodoros Rousopoulos, sent a letter on Tuesday to Parliament Speaker Szymon Holownia in which he said that Romanowski was covered by immunity as a member and that judicial proceedings against him should be suspended.
“It’s not about me, it’s about the Polish state, which has suffered very serious damage in the international arena, by causing a situation in which a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe was illegally detained,” Romanowski told reporters following his release.
Prosecutors allege that members of the arch-conservative Sovereign Poland party, a junior partner in the nationalist Law and Justice government that left office in December, misused money from the Justice Fund, which is intended to help victims of crime.
Prosecutors say they have evidence that Romanowski committed 11 crimes including exceeding his powers and causing the state treasury to suffer losses.
The National Prosecutor’s Office head said prosecutors would decide whether to appeal against the court’s decision after analyzing the arguments presented in its written justification.
He added that he would share with Rousopoulos information presenting the subject of the proceedings, the charges Romanowski is facing, when these events took place and whether they were related to his performance as a member of the Assembly.
“If the application (to strip Romanowski of his immunity as an Assembly member) needs to be submitted after clarification, we will certainly do so,” Dariusz Korneluk said.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is the parliamentary arm of the 46-member Council of Europe, which was formed after World War Two to protect human rights and the rule of law across the continent. It is separate from the European Union.
($1 = 3.9258 zlotys)
(Reporting by Alan Charlish; Aditional reporting by Anna Koper; Editing by Alison Williams and Hugh Lawson)
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