Poland’s public prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into banners put up in April by Legia Warsaw football fans during a home game.
One of the banners mocked Rafał Trzaskowski, the presidential candidate for the ruling Civic Coalition, party led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The other targeted a doctor who had performed a controversial abortion on an unborn child in the ninth month of pregnancy.
According to prosecutors on April 30, the banners’ authors were being investigated for allegedly defaming Trzaskowski and the doctor under an article of the penal code that could see them go to prison for two years if convicted.
The banner mocking Trzaskowski read: “Rafał ordered the removal of crosses. Now he pretends to be Catholic – ever known a more hypocritical politician?” It was referring to the fact that as Warsaw mayor he had ordered the removal of the Christian cross from public spaces but during the presidential election campaign was presenting himself as a Catholic.
The slogan displayed on the banner attacking the doctor who performed the abortion was far more aggressive: “Jagielska = Mengele” it read, in reference to Josef Mengele, a a Nazi German SS officer and physician during the Second World War at the Russian front and then at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.
The investigation into the banner about Trzaskowski was commented on in social media by the opposition Conservatives (PiS) MEP Patryk Jaki who accused the Tusk administration of wanting “to imprison football fans” for criticism of their candidate.
“If Trzaskowski becomes president he will sign the hate speech law and there will be as much freedom in Poland as in Muslim states,” wrote Jaki.
The MEP was referring to the hate speech legislation proposed by the Tusk government which the current PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda has refused to approve but which the ruling coalition insisted would return to parliament should Trzaskowski win the presidential election
The legislation would give minorities such as LGBT the status of being specially protected with prosecutors obliged to prioritise allegations of hate speech directed at them.
PiS MP and former deputy justice minister Sebastian Kaleta said on social media that the prosecutors were “pursuing a case that should be the subject of a private prosecution, meaning that the public prosecutor’s office should not be involved in any way.”
“An extraordinary scandal — public prosecutors are mere waiters for Tusk and Trzaskowski. They want to crush any criticism of the ruling camp.
“They are truly terrified of Trzaskowski’s defeat and the spectre of accountability” Kaleta added.
BODNAROWCY ŚCIAGAJĄ KIBICÓW LEGII ZA TEN TRANSPARENT ‼️
"Rafałek kazał zdejmować krzyże, teraz udaje katolika. Czy znacie bardziej fałszywego polityka?"
Wczoraj pokazywałem, że bodnarowcy w swoim raporcie jako mowę nienawiści traktują krytykę Rafała Trzaskowskiego. Co więcej… pic.twitter.com/jxD2hwOnKX
— Sebastian Kaleta (@sjkaleta) May 1, 2025
Poland has been criticised repeatedly by civil rights groups, journalists and the European Commission for the fact that it makes defamation a criminal rather than a civil law matter.
Some Polish journalists have been sentenced to terms in prison for defaming public officials and the Association of Polish Journalists (SDP) has been campaigning for years for legislative change as it views the criminalisation of defamation as dangerous for free speech and journalism.
