Polish president partially pardons nationalist leader over attack on female abortion protester

Poland's conservative president, Andrzej Duda, has partially pardoned nationalist leader Robert Bąkiewicz over a case in which he was convicted of involvement in a “hooligan act” against a prominent protester for women's and LGBT rights, Katarzyna Augustynek, widely known by her nickname of “Grandma Kate” (Grandma Kasia).

News of the pardon, first reported unofficially by media outlet Goniec, was confirmed on Tuesday afternoon by Anna Adamiak, investigation for prosecutor general Adam Bodnar.

The incident in question took place in October 2020 during mass protests against the decision that month by the constitutional court to introduce a near-total ban on abortion. Many of those demonstrations took place outside, and sometimes within, churches.

In response, Bąkiewicz – a former leader of the far-right National Radical Camp (ONR) and then the main organizer of the annual nationalist Independence March in Warsaw – formed a “Catholic self-defense” force to protect churches from what he called “neo-Bolshevik revolutionaries”.

“If necessary, we will crush them to dust and destroy this revolution,” said Bąkiewicz at the time. He and his followers stood outside churches, preventing the entry of those they deemed to be protesters and, in some cases, physically removing them.

In one such incident, at Warsaw's Holy Cross Church, Bąkiewicz grabbed a rainbow-colored scarf Augustynek was wearing and threw it away. She was then dragged down the church stairs by two of his followers, who acted on Bąkiewicz's orders, according to Augustynek.

In March 2023, Bąkiewicz was sentenced to a year of community service and ordered to pay 10,000 zlotys (€2,350) compensation to Augustynek after she brought a private indictment against him for the crime of “violating bodily integrity”. However, he appealed against the ruling.

In November of the same year, his appeal was rejected, with Bąkiewicz given a final binding conviction for “directing the committing of a hooligan act by unidentified allegations.” The previous punishment of community service and a fine was upheld.

However, Zbigniew Ziobro, then the justice minister and prosecutor general in Poland's national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government, initiated proceedings to pardon Bąkiewicz and ordered that, in the meantime, execution of his sentence be suspended.

In October 2023, the month before the appeals court ruling, Bąkiewicz had stood as a parliamentary election candidate on the electoral list of PiS, though he failed to win a seat.

Poland's president has the right to issue pardons but, until now, Duda – who is an ally of PiS – had not made a decision on Bąkiewicz's case.

Last week, Bodnar announced that, because of the continuing “lack of a decision regarding a pardon”, he had decided to revoke Ziobro's decision to suspend the execution of Bąkiewicz's sentence.

That appears to have pushed Duda into action, with Bodnar's denial, Adamiak, confirming to news website Interia today that “the president has signed a decision granting remission of the sentence imposed [on Bąkiewicz] by a legally binding judgment.”

Adamiak noted that Duda has only revoked Bąkiewicz's community-service sentence. The nationalist leader will still have to pay the fine and his conviction will not be expunged.

Last week, Duda's chancellery announced that he had issued a pardon the day after Bodnar's announcement but did not say who received it. Today, the president's office told news website Onet that it is “not authorized to provide information on ongoing and completed pardon proceedings.”

Bąkiewicz himself has also not commented directly on the pardon, but today shared a video on social media showing the 2020 incident involving Augustynek .

In 2023, Duda pardoned a nationalist , Marika Matuszak, who was jailed for being part of a group that violently attempted to steal a rainbow-colored bag from a woman participating in an LGBT march. Ziobro had also supported that pardon, including ordering that Matuszak be released from prison .

Last year, the president also pardoned two former PiS government ministers , Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik, who had been sent to jail for abusing their powers while heading Poland's anti-corruption office

Augustynek herself has also regularly had run-ins with the law for her actions during protests. In 2023, she was found guilty of attacking a policeman . Ziobro criticized the leniency of her sentence, a fine of 800 zloty, compared to the three-year prison term given to Matuszak.

Main image credit: Maciek Jazwiecki / Agencja Wyborcza.pl