A Polish ex-justice minister, who faces criminal charges including misappropriating funds meant for crime victims to illegally purchase Israeli spyware, said on Monday he had received “asylum” in Hungary.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto confirmed Budapest had granted “asylum or refugee status to individuals suffering political persecution in Poland”, without naming the individuals concerned.
Polish conservative former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro served from 2015 to 2023 in the government of the populist-nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, a close ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
He faces up to 25 years in prison on 26 charges, including abuse of power, leading an organised criminal enterprise and using funds meant for crime victims to buy Israeli Pegasus spyware, allegedly to monitor political opponents.
“I decided to take advantage of the asylum granted to me by the Hungarian government due to political repression in Poland,” Ziobro said in a lengthy post on X on Monday.
Polish deputy defence minister Cezary Tomczyk responded by saying: “Ziobro will not go unpunished.”
“No politician is above the law,” he told broadcaster Polsat.
In November, the Polish parliament lifted Ziobro’s immunity, and consented to his detention and arrest.
– Arrest warrant –
Ziobro is considered the architect of a series of contentious judicial reforms that sparked a standoff between Poland and the European Union.
He rejects the charges against him and has accused Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist government of organising a witch hunt against the conservative opposition.
A Ziobro aide in the former government, Marcin Romanowski, obtained political asylum from the Hungarian government after facing similar charges.
Romanowski continues to reside in Hungary, despite a European arrest warrant issued by Poland and unprecedented diplomatic tension between the two EU countries.
There is no political asylum mechanism as such between EU member states for the protection of their own nationals.
European law considers that “the level of protection of fundamental rights and freedoms in the member states of the European Union” makes them “safe countries of origin vis-à-vis one another”.
Exceptions are provided for, however.
To justify Budapest’s decision, Hungary’s Szijjarto said Monday that democracy and the rule of law were “in crisis and under threat in Poland”.
His country, he added, has accepted “asylum” applications or granted “refugee status” to “several people who are targets of political persecution in Poland”.
Also on Monday, one of Ziobro’s lawyers, Bartosz Lewandowski, stated that the former minister will receive a travel document.
Such a document, accounted for under the 1951 Geneva Convention, is issued to persons with refugee status by the state in which the refugee resides.
The so-called “Geneva passport”, however, does not provide protection against national or international arrest warrants, including European Arrest Warrants.
ks/gil/phz