Polish officials search communist dictator's home

A Polish institute tasked with prosecuting communist-era crimes on Monday searched a dictator's home as it looks into whether Solidarity freedom hero Lech Walesa was a paid communist secret agent.

Prosecutors from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) "are carrying out operations at the home of the widow of General Wojciech Jaruzelski" in Warsaw, spokeswoman Agnieszka Sopinska-Jaremczak said.

Jaruzelski, who died in 2014, was Poland's last communist leader. He was known for trying to strangle the Solidarity opposition movement in 1981 with a brutal military crackdown.

Earlier this month the IPN had searched the home of the widow of General Czeslaw Kiszczak, who had been Jaruzelski's right-hand man when the regime imposed martial law.

It was following that raid that the IPN said it had found a secret police file containing a collaboration agreement signed with Walesa's alleged codename "Bolek".

The Nobel Peace laureate, renowned for negotiating a bloodless end to communism in Poland in 1989, angrily denied allegations that he had been a paid secret agent from 1970 to 1976.
Rumours have long swirled that the 72-year-old, who later served as president, covertly fed the communist regime information while leading the Soviet bloc's only independent trade union.

A special vetting court ruled in 2000 that there was no basis to the suspicions.

Walesa said secret police officers faked the payment receipts for agent Bolek, prompting the IPN last week to launch a probe into whether the files are forgeries.

Right-wing politicians like Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the powerful leader of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, have long argued that Walesa was a regime spy and puppet.

Centrists and liberals ridicule the idea, arguing that Kaczynski -- who was also a communist-era dissident -- is being vengeful after falling out with Walesa during his presidency.

Tens of thousands of people gathered in the Polish capital Warsaw and the northern city of Gdansk over the weekend in a show of support for Walesa.
Source: AFP