Warsaw - Twenty-two riot police were cleared yesterday of responsibility for shooting dead nine striking miners in the 1981 communist crackdown on the Solidarity trade union and democracy movement.
A court in the southern Polish city of Katowice acquitted 13 police troopers and closed without verdicts the cases of nine others accused of cracking down on the December 1981 strike at the Wujek coal mine with tanks and rifles, leaving nine dead and 20 wounded, PAP news agency reported.
The court "did not find irrefutable proof of the guilt" of the accused and was forced to acquit them because of "reasonable doubt", the chief judge, Mr Aleksandra Roktiel, was quoted as saying.