President Andrzej Duda decided to pardon Jan Śpiewak, a social activist from Warsaw.

The Deputy Head of the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland Paweł Mucha stressed that the President, when making his decision, had in mind that

„the consequences of the conviction far exceed the normal level of their severity”.

As he added, the president made a decision

„comparing the motives of the convicted person’s actions with the consequences of the sentence in the sphere of personal life and taking into account the significant involvement of the pardoned Jan Śpiewak in social activities”.

In mid-December last year, Jan Śpiewak was found guilty of defaming the lawyer Bogumiła Górnikowska by the District Court in Warsaw. The justification of the judgment was classified.

Śpiewak publicly criticized Górnikowska in connection with the reprivatisation (formally the process of recovering the property taken by the communists, which in Warsaw ruled by the Platform turned into a great thievery; giving away huge state properties to people who did not have the right to it for next to nothing) of one of the buildings in Warsaw and her activities in the years 2008-2011, when she was the curator of the owner of the building, who - as it turned out - had been dead since 1959. At the time when the building was handed over, the alleged owner was to be… 120 years old!

Tłum. K.J.