International witnesses in trial against Jaruzelski

A district court in Warsaw yesterday ruled that Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) must hear the testimony of further witnesses before bringing former head of state and party leader Wojciech Jaruzelski to trial. In compliance with Jaruzelski's request, those witnesses would include the former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Mirosław Czech welcomes the decision. "The imposition of martial law ended the peaceful Solidarnosc revolution. It destroyed the hopes of millions of Poles. ... The group led by General Wojciech Jaruzelski was solely responsible for this. The imposition of martial law was a political decision, and therefore the trial will be a political one. The court must examine all the documents, above all those from the Soviet archives. Witnesses must be questioned, including Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher, which may seem superfluous or even ridiculous at first. The IPN thus wants to turn the court into a classroom for recent history and it to judge over matters that should be left to the historians. ... If a public prosecutor is allowed to deal with assessments of the past, history loses and justice gains nothing."

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