Prosecutors on Monday charged Bąkiewicz with insulting officers of the Border Guard and military police near the western border town of Słubice.
Investigators said Bąkiewicz publicly called two Border Guard officers and two military police officers "traitors" while they were performing their duties in June.
Bąkiewicz denied the accusations and refused to give testimony.
Prosecutors placed him under police supervision, required him to report any changes of residence, and banned him from approaching Poland’s border crossings with Germany by less than one kilometer.
Speaking at a press conference in parliament, senior opposition politician Mariusz Błaszczak, a former defence minister, argued that the charges were politically motivated because Bąkiewicz had "exposed the problem of German services pushing illegal migrants into Poland."
Błaszczak, who heads the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) parliamentary group, told reporters that Bąkiewicz's group, called Border Defense Movement, had documented such incidents, which the government previously denied.
After leaving the prosecutor’s office, Bąkiewicz said he was the target of a "politically motivated campaign."
Bąkiewicz, a figure associated with Poland’s far-right nationalist scene, set up the Border Defense Movement to organise what it calls “citizen patrols” along Poland’s western border with Germany.
The group describes itself as a nationwide initiative to defend the country from "mass migration and related threats."
The government says the number of illegal migrants crossing into Poland has been falling steadily. Last week, Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek said that Poland’s borders were secure and dismissed talk of German authorities pushing migrants into Poland as “fairy tales.”
He also said citizens should not attempt to take border matters into their own hands, adding that only official services are responsible for protecting Poland’s borders within the European Union’s Schengen zone, which guarantees passport-free travel.
(rt/gs)
Source: IAR, PAP