Under the existing law in Poland, crimes committed by former communist officials can be prosecuted only until the end of this month.
Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice party submitted a bill to repeal this provision. Senators on Thursday evening greenlighted the bill, which must be signed by the president in order to come into force.
Last month, President Andrzej Duda said that "communist crimes should be prosecuted in the same way as crimes of genocide."
Communism in Poland collapsed in 1989, but many crimes committed by functionaries and agents of the former regime remain unpunished.
Andrzej Gwiazda, one of the founders of the Solidarity pro-democracy movement, told public broadcaster Polish Radio recently that a failure to introduce a law allowing communist crimes to be prosecuted beyond August 2020 would amount to “a mockery of justice.”
(pk/gs)
Source: IAR