Ex-intelligence chiefs probed over ‘worst type of betrayal’: Polish defence minister

Warsaw prosecutors are conducting a probe into suspicions that former heads of Poland’s Military Counterintelligence Service overstepped their powers, including allegations that they cooperated with a foreign country without the consent of the Polish prime minister.

‘Illegal cooperation with Russian spies’

"This is about fully conscious and illegal cooperation with Russian spies, about the worst type of betrayal a Pole can commit," Macierewicz told public broadcaster TVP Info on Wednesday.

"We are dealing with people who have very serious allegations against them,” he added.

Asked if former Prime Minister Donald Tusk knew about cooperation between the SKW and Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Macierewicz replied that "at some stage he certainly gained some knowledge."

Macierewicz was speaking after Piotr Pytel, a former head of Poland’s Military Counterintelligence Service was detained on Wednesday.

Macierewicz said Pytel “is being charged in connection with illegal collaboration with the FSB.”

The FSB is Russia’s principal security agency and the main successor agency to the KGB.

Relations between Moscow and Warsaw are tense while Russian intelligence services are widely seen in Poland as hostile to this country.

After emerging from a prosecutor's office on Wednesday, Pytel said he had refused to testify. He told reporters that the case against him was politically motivated.

Poland’s Gazeta Polska Codziennie daily reported last year that Poland’s Military Counterintelligence Service and the FSB struck a deal in April 2010, just after the crash of a Polish presidential plane in western Russia, on cooperation regarding threats faced by either of the sides.

Gazeta Polska Codziennie reported that a former SKW head and Pytel, his successor, had been accused of overstepping their powers.

Tusk, now European Council head, in April appeared before prosecutors in Warsaw as a witness in a probe into suspected collaboration between Russian and Polish intelligence services.

(pk/gs)

Source: IAR/TVP Info