Prosecution drops investigation into Lech Wałęsa's false testimony regarding Kiszczak files
The District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw has dropped an investigation into former President Lech Wałęsa over allegedly false testimony in the matter of the so-called Kiszczak files.
Dropping of investigation into Wałęsa and the Kiszczak files
The District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw has dropped an investigation into former President Lech Wałęsa — according to portal fakt.pl. The proceedings concerned the provision of false testimony regarding the so-called Kiszczak files.
The prosecutor's office published a statement on the matter on Thursday, 24 September. The investigation was related to Wałęsa's interrogation on 13 April 2016, conducted as part of proceedings concerning the authenticity of documents found in the home of the widow of Czesław Kiszczak.
During this interrogation, the former president was shown handwritten documents bearing the signatures "Bolek" or "Lech Wałęsa". "Apart from one document, he denied that he had drawn up or signed the documents shown to him" — prosecutor Wojciech Sitek stated.
The basis of the charges was an expert opinion from the Jan Sehn Institute of Forensic Expertise in Kraków, which indicated that the vast majority of documents from the Kiszczak files and the signatures "Bolek" appearing on them had been drawn up by Wałęsa. However, the prosecutor's office questioned the evidentiary value of this expertise.
"The experts could not be certain that Lech Wałęsa actually wrote these entries. The experts were not provided with so-called exemplars of handwriting, that is, text written by Lech Wałęsa at the request and in the presence of a prosecutor or police officer" — prosecutor Sitek explained. He added that regarding most of the documents from various offices, Wałęsa, who had previously been shown them, denied that he had written them.
The prosecutor handling the case concluded that there was no evidence allowing her to conclude with absolute certainty that the comparative material actually came from Lech Wałęsa. Methodological errors committed when drawing up the expertise were also highlighted.
"The prosecutor considered any potential errors by Lech Wałęsa in terms of the potential possibility of holding him criminally liable for earlier false testimony given to any court or prosecutor to be justified" — Sitek quoted. This assessment precluded bringing charges against the former president in the formulation developed during the proceedings, regardless of whether the testimony given on 13 April 2016 was actually false.
The District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw remains the official source of information on the matter.
Source: Google News PL