Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Sunday accused opposition politicians of cynicism after they described the forced entry by emergency services into a Gdańsk apartment connected to Nawrocki’s family as an "attack on the president."
The incident took place on Saturday evening after emergency services received a report suggesting a possible fire or threat to life. The alarm turned out to be false.
Tusk held a briefing on Sunday with ministers and representatives of the security services. He later wrote on X that calling a fire service response to a possible threat to human life “a brutal attack by the services on the president” was either “extreme cynicism or extreme stupidity.”
“You are embarrassing yourselves,” Tusk added, naming former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Law and Justice (PiS) lawmaker Przemysław Czarnek and Zbigniew Bogucki, the head of the President's Office.
The case quickly became part of a wider political dispute. Several opposition politicians argued that the apartment should have been protected by the State Protection Service (SOP), the Polish agency responsible for the security of the country’s most senior officials. Some also called for the resignation of Interior and Administration Minister Marcin Kierwiński and Tomasz Siemoniak, the minister coordinating Poland’s special services.
Karolina Gałecka, spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Interior and Administration (MSWiA), said overnight that the apartment named in the report did not belong to the president, but to a member of his family. For that reason, she said, the address was not covered by SOP protection.
Morawiecki called the incident “a scandal, a disgrace and a humiliation of the state.” He said the case had to be explained immediately and that those responsible should face consequences.
PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński also weighed in, accusing the government of using “provocations” and “insinuations” to intimidate political opponents and their families. He said “another line had been crossed” because the apartment of the president’s mother had been targeted.
Nawrocki’s spokesman, Rafał Leśkiewicz, said the debate over whether the family home legally belonged to the president distracted from what he called the lack of systemic solutions and accountability among service chiefs. He said the apartment was connected to the president’s mother and was listed in Nawrocki’s publicly available asset declaration as jointly inherited with his sister.
Kierwiński defended the emergency response, saying police and firefighters were required to check every report when there was even a possible threat to health or life.
“Calling an action carried out in line with procedures an attack is disgusting,” he wrote. “There are those who want to turn everything into a political weapon, but this is about procedures that save lives every day.”
Deputy Prime Minister and Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski warned that disinformation and fake news destabilize public security by creating uncertainty. He appealed to the public to verify information and check sources.
The incident comes amid a series of false emergency reports involving public figures. The Interior Ministry said on May 18 that between May 10 and 15 police services carried out 12 interventions connected to reports of alleged explosive devices or threats to health and life.
One earlier police response took place at the home of the editor-in-chief of right-wing broadcaster TV Republika after a report concerning an alleged threat to a minor. The intervention proved baseless and was treated as an attempt to mislead the services.
Police later detained a 53-year-old man who may have been connected to false alarms, although Warsaw police subsequently said he may have been the victim of identity theft and unauthorized access to his email account.
Police also responded last Sunday at Kaczyński’s property in Warsaw after a report allegedly claimed explosives had been planted in the garden.
Deputy Interior Minister Czesław Mroczek said on Sunday that those responsible for false fire reports would not go unpunished. He said services had received about 1,200 such reports this year, and that roughly 80 percent involved real threats to people.
After Sunday’s briefing, Tusk urged officials to communicate openly about state actions whenever information did not need to remain secret, in order to stop speculation and “foolish assumptions” from spreading.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP, IAR