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Probe to determine if communists fabricated Walesa spy files

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Poland on Thursday launched a probe into whether communist secret policemen forged 1970s files identifying Lech Walesa as a paid regime spy codenamed "Bolek", an allegation the the Solidarity hero has flatly denied.

Fresh allegations of collaboration surfaced last week when state prosecutors seized previously unknown regime documents from 1970-76 from the widow of a communist-era general.

Walesa "insist that SB (secret police) officers faked payment receipts for agent 'Bolek'. This must be verified in a probe, because it could qualify as an offence under the criminal code," Lukasz Kaminski, head of the IPN communist crimes prosecutors, said Thursday.

Experts have consistently raised doubts about the credibility of communist secret police files, arguing they could easily have been manufactured to frame opposition activists like Walesa.

While Nobel Peace Prize winner Walesa -- renowned for negotiating a bloodless end to communism in Poland in 1989 -- enigmatically admitted to having "made a mistake", he insists files implicating him are "complete fakes."

A special vetting court ruled in 2000 that there was no basis to suspicions that he had been a paid regime agent.

Rumours have long swirled that as a shipyard electrician, Walesa covertly fed the communist regime information while leading the freedom-fighting Solidarity, the Soviet bloc's only independent trade union.

The 1989 "Round Table" agreement between Solidarity and the Communist party triggered the country's first democratic elections since World War II, and ushered Walesa into the presidency a year later.

Right-wing politicians like Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the powerful leader of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, have long argued that Walesa was a regime spy and puppet.

Centrists and liberals ridicule the idea, arguing that Kaczynski -- who was also a communist-era dissident -- is being vengeful after falling out with Walesa during his presidency.

Poland on Thursday launched a probe into whether communist secret policemen forged 1970s files identifying Lech Walesa as a paid regime spy codenamed “Bolek”, an allegation the the Solidarity hero has flatly denied.

Fresh allegations of collaboration surfaced last week when state prosecutors seized previously unknown regime documents from 1970-76 from the widow of a communist-era general.

Walesa “insist that SB (secret police) officers faked payment receipts for agent ‘Bolek’. This must be verified in a probe, because it could qualify as an offence under the criminal code,” Lukasz Kaminski, head of the IPN communist crimes prosecutors, said Thursday.

Experts have consistently raised doubts about the credibility of communist secret police files, arguing they could easily have been manufactured to frame opposition activists like Walesa.

While Nobel Peace Prize winner Walesa — renowned for negotiating a bloodless end to communism in Poland in 1989 — enigmatically admitted to having “made a mistake”, he insists files implicating him are “complete fakes.”

A special vetting court ruled in 2000 that there was no basis to suspicions that he had been a paid regime agent.

Rumours have long swirled that as a shipyard electrician, Walesa covertly fed the communist regime information while leading the freedom-fighting Solidarity, the Soviet bloc’s only independent trade union.

The 1989 “Round Table” agreement between Solidarity and the Communist party triggered the country’s first democratic elections since World War II, and ushered Walesa into the presidency a year later.

Right-wing politicians like Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the powerful leader of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, have long argued that Walesa was a regime spy and puppet.

Centrists and liberals ridicule the idea, arguing that Kaczynski — who was also a communist-era dissident — is being vengeful after falling out with Walesa during his presidency.

AFP
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