Kukliński, who died 17 years ago and was later posthumously promoted to general, was on Thursday remembered in his native Poland, including in the eastern city of Lublin and in the capital Warsaw, where he is buried at a military cemetery.
A plaque honouring Ryszard Kukliński in the eastern Polish city of Lublin. Photo: PAP/Tomasz Koryszko
Officials have said that Kukliński deserves praise because he served his country when it was under Soviet control during the communist era.
The state-run Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) said in a social media post on Thursday that Kukliński and his family were spirited out of Poland in 1981.
The history institute noted that a Polish military court sentenced Kukliński to death in absentia under communism. Eleven years later, the sentence was lifted, the IPN said.
Kukliński passed top-secret Warsaw Pact documents to the CIA between 1971 and 1981, including plans for a military onslaught on the West and for the imposition of martial law in Poland to crush the Solidarity movement.
Shortly after the declaration of martial law in December 1981, Kukliński was extracted from Poland by the CIA, along with his family.
In 1984, a military court in Warsaw sentenced him to death in absentia. The sentence was annulled after the fall of communism in Poland in 1989.
Kukliński died in the United States on February 11, 2004 at the age of 73.
He was posthumously elevated to the rank of brigadier general by Polish President Andrzej Duda in 2016.
(gs/pk)
Source: IAR