Wałęsa denies informant claims on return to Poland
PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge
29.02.2016 18:32
Nobel Prize-winner Lech Wałęsa repeated denials that he was an informant for the communist security services during the 1970s, at a press conference in his native Gdańsk on Monday.
Lech Wałęsa speaks at a press conference at the European Solidarity Centre in Gdańsk, 29 February. Photo: PAP/Adam Warżawa
The former Polish president had been away in Argentina and the US when the informant claims re-erupted.
Documents were seized from the house of late communist interior minister Czesław Kiszczak by police working in tandem with the Institute for National Remembrance (IPN).
Walęsa claimed on Monday that it is “already known” that some of the recently published documents were falsified.
“When I find out how it happened and who did it, I will take IPN to court, because they have offended me in front of the entire world,” he said.
The materials included a supposed personal file and a work file of the secret collaborator codenamed Bolek, allegedly Lech Wałęsa, the former file numbering 183 pages and the latter 576 pages.
Wałesa made a number of statements on his blog while outside Poland last week. He acknowledged making “a mistake” but insisted he was never a paid informant.
On Monday he stated that he was offered high governmental positions by communist officials if he agreed to cooperate, but he says he never gave in.
According to earlier publications by several historians, Wałęsa broke off cooperation with the communist secret services several years before the August 1980 strike in the Gdańsk Shipyard and the birth of Solidarity, with Wałęsa as its chairman.
Wałesa admitted in the past to having had run-ins with the security services, but said he was playing “a game”.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and served as president of Poland from 1990 to 1995, after the end of the communist system. (tf/nh)
Source: IAR/PAP/gazetaprawna.pl