Files seized in raid on late communist leader Jaruzelski's house

The raid on the Warsaw residence, which was carried out by Polish police together with IPN prosecutors, follows on from a similar action on 16 February, when files were confiscated at the home of the widow of communist interior minister Czesław Kiszczak.

IPN spokeswoman Agnieszka Sopińska-Jaremczak has said that the Jaruzelski documents will undergo “an inspection conducted by the IPN prosecutor with the participation of specialists/archivists from the Office for the Preservation and Dissemination of the Archival Records.”

Documents confiscated at the house of Kiszczak's widow last month have been at the centre of a media storm.

Some historians allege that they confirm a theory that former president Lech Wałęsa cooperated with the security services in the years prior to the 1980 establishment of the Solidarity trade union.

Following the Kiszczak raid, IPN indicated that it was considering searching the properties of other former leading figures of the communist regime, which ended in 1989.

General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's last communist leader, is most widely remembered for the imposition of martial law in December 1981, a crackdown that crippled the burgeoning Solidarity movement.

However, it has been suggested that Monday's IPN raid may have been chiefly in connection with allegations that Jaruzelski cooperated with military counterintelligence during the late 1940s.

General Wojciech Jaruzelski died in May 2014. (nh)

Source: PAP