The PiS Settlement Team will file a notice next week about the possibility of a disciplinary offence committed by Judge Przemysław Dziwański, announced Civic Coalition MP, attorney Roman Giertych. The offence is to consist in accepting for consideration the case of applying arrest to Marcin Romanowski “in a situation of planning an exceptionally long vacation.”
Dziwański is a judge who was on the panel adjudicating in the case of the arrest of Marcin Romanowski – PiS MPa politician of Solidarna Polska. The prosecutor's office wants to arrest Romanowski on suspicions of his responsibility for irregularities in spending money from the Justice Fund.
Initially, the panel adjudicating on the appeal against the refusal to arrest Romanowski was to be a single-person panel, with Przemysław Dziwański becoming the reporting judge. Last week, the prosecutor's office filed a motion to have him removed. It argued that Dziwański was appointed to the position of judge of the District Court in Warsaw in 2023 by the neo-National Council of the Judiciary, which – due to, among other things, judgments of European tribunals – means that he cannot be considered a guarantor of an independent and impartial court. However, the District Court in Warsaw did not grant this motion this week.
READ: What is the Marcin Romanowski case about? We summarize
Giertych on the “possibility of committing a disciplinary offence”
He commented on Dziwański's case in a post on the X portal. Roman Giertychleader of the parliamentary team for the settlement of PiS. “Next week, the PiS Settlement Team will submit a notification of a possible disciplinary offence committed by Regional Court Judge Przemysław Dziwański by accepting for consideration a case for the application of arrest against MP M. Romanowski in a situation where he was planning an exceptionally long vacation,” announced Giertych.
As he added, “the prosecutor's office's arrest motion is dictated by a proven fear of tampering, and extending its consideration results in a further threat related to this tampering”. “Such an attitude of the judge is an insult to the authority of the justice system and constitutes, among other things, a disciplinary offence consisting in undermining the dignity of the profession of a judge. We also request the Minister of Justice to appoint an ad hoc disciplinary spokesman and take action immediately” – wrote Giertych.
Extended panel of judges in Romanowski case
The prosecutor's office wants to apply a three-month arrest to Romanowski, who was the deputy minister of justice in the United Right government. However, on 16 July, the District Court for Warsaw-Mokotów refused to arrest the politician due to his immunity from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. In its appeal against this decision, the prosecutor's office claimed that a new legal analysis indicates that the scope of immunity protection concerning Romanowski in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe does not cover the acts he is accused of. The case was referred to the District Court in Warsaw and is awaiting a decision.
On Thursday afternoon, the District Court in Warsaw announced on the expansion of the adjudicating panelin which there will be three judges, and that the hearing date will be set after September 23. As the court reported, Judge Dziwański will be on leave from Monday, from which he will return in September. – He asked for a date to be set after September 23, because then he will be able to deal with this case, but we also do not know what the plans of the other two judges who will be drawn will be – noted at the time the spokeswoman for criminal matters of the District Court in Warsaw, Judge Anna Ptaszek.
In turn, on Friday, the Warsaw Regional Court reported that one of the two judges who were added to the adjudicating panel on Thursday had filed a motion to be removed from the panel. Earlier, Onet noted that judge Aleksandra Rusin-Batko had previously worked in the Ministry of Justice. Her direct superior at the time was Marcin Romanowski.
As the portal wrote, until January 12 this year, Rusin-Batko was the director of the Department of Strategy and European Funds in the ministry headed by Zbigniew Ziobro“She took over as head of this department before 2019, because in that year she was already, as a director from the Ministry of Justice, appointed as a member of one of the committees appointed by Ziobro,” he added.
The prosecutor's office announced that if the District Court upholds the decision of the first instance court to refuse to arrest Romanowski due to the immunity of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, it will apply for its lifting.
Main image source: PAP/Rafal Guz