Poland puts martial law leader on trial

POLAND:THE COMMUNIST Polish leader who imposed martial law and banned Solidarity went on trial yesterday, just as Warsaw gave the European Union a last-ditch plan to save the Gdansk shipyard where the legendary pro-democracy movement was born.

Gen Wojciech Jaruzelski and seven other former officials are charged with "communist crimes" over the imposition in 1981 of martial law, which put troops on Poland's streets and led to clashes which resulted in the death of dozens of people and the imprisonment of thousands more between December 1981 and July 1983.

Gen Jaruzelski banned Solidarity which, having become the only free trade union in the entire communist bloc in 1980, went underground during martial law before re-emerging to ultimately negotiate Poland's peaceful transition to democracy in 1989.

Gen Jaruzelski (85) and his fellow defendants have always insisted that they imposed martial law to prevent Soviet forces invading Poland just as they had Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, when reform movements threatened to loosen Moscow's grip on its empire.

Senior officials in Gen Jaruzelski's regime are standing trial alongside him, including former Communist Party chief Stanislaw Kania (81) and former interior minister Czeslaw Kiszczak (82).

Earlier this year Gen Kiszczak - who missed yesterday's hearing through ill health - was found guilty of the involuntary manslaughter of nine miners who were shot dead at the Wujek colliery in December 1981 while striking in protest at martial law. He escaped a jail sentence after the judge ruled that he had not authorised the use of firearms.

Gen Jaruzelski is also being tried separately for his role in a 1970 massacre of dozens of workers on Poland's Baltic coast during a crackdown by the security services, when he was serving as defence minister.

The long-awaited trial began on the same day that the Polish government gave Brussels a final rescue plan for three big Baltic shipyards, including the former Lenin Shipyard at Gdansk where Solidarity was created by workers who included electrician Lech Walesa - later a Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of his country.

If the EU rejects the plans, the three yards will have to repay illegal state aid totalling more than €2.3 billion, forcing them into bankruptcy.

Such an outcome would devastate the Baltic coast and leave some 60,000 people facing unemployment, according to Polish officials whose previous financial plan for the yards was rejected by Brussels two months ago. It would also deal a blow to the country's pro-EU government and probably strengthen Poland's eurosceptics.

The government said last week that it had reached a preliminary deal with investors on the restructuring plans involving additional state aid, allowed under EU rules provided that it leads to a company's long-term financial viability.