Attorney Bartosz Malewski, the defense lawyer for the suspect, announced on X just before midnight on Friday that a complaint had been filed with the court over the police’s actions during the detention of Piotr W.
Acting on a power of attorney, Malewski filed a complaint with the court over the course of Piotr W.’s detention “in view of the circumstances and the manner in which the action was carried out.”
In his post on X, he noted that he, together with attorneys Magdalena Prządka-Leszczyńska and Magdalena Majkowska, would report “on the further course of this case.”
Piotr W. was detained by police officers securing an assembly in front of the Constitutional Tribunal on Friday, Oct. 16, on Marszałkowska Street in Warsaw.
Warsaw police said at the time that Piotr W. had been detained near the Tribunal after allegedly attacking a policewoman by pushing her. The officer was taken to a hospital. The man ran from police, and he was detained in a building that houses the office of Adam Borowski, one of the initiators of the protests at the Tribunal. A knife was found on the detained man.
Piotr W. has been charged with violating the bodily integrity of police officers and with using force or threats to make them abandon official duties. Both offenses were committed as acts of hooliganism.
“Mr. Piotr did in fact have a knife in the sleeve of his jacket. A folding knife. I don’t know whether it was a knife or a pocketknife, because I don’t know much about that, but it makes no difference. Both a knife and a pocketknife are dangerous tools that one cannot have on one’s person while taking part in an assembly,” Prządka-Leszczyńska said. “But Piotr W. was not taking part in the assembly,” she told the media.
She argued that “taking part in an assembly and being present during an assembly are two different things.” She also said that, to her knowledge, the detention “took place outside the area of the assembly.” “The knife was secured after Mr. Piotr was detained, at the very end, as a result of searching him, after he had already been on the ground. The knife was not a participant in this entire situation at all,” she added.
Prządka-Leszczyńska also said that “Piotr W. worked at the assembly.” “He provided technical support for the assembly, prepared meals for participants, connected cables, put up banners and did technical tasks, so that answers the question of why he had a knife on him,” she added.
Prosecutors had requested one month of pretrial detention for the man, citing the need to secure forensic psychiatric examinations of the suspect. The court rejected the request and released the suspect without imposing any preventive measures.
The case of Piotr W.’s detention has also been taken up by the Commissioner for Human Rights (Rzecznik Praw Obywatelskich, or RPO), Poland’s ombudsman. As the RPO’s office reported on Monday, “the Commissioner for Human Rights has launched, on his own initiative, a case concerning the intervention by police officers against a man near the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw on Oct. 16, 2026.”
“This is the so-called ex officio procedure, which does not mean that the office already sees violations at this stage. The office is asking about this situation because a citizen clashed with police and because this case is being commented on in the public sphere (…),” Commissioner for Human Rights Sylwia Gregorczyk-Abram explained in an interview with Radio TOK FM.
She noted that the RPO’s office had asked for explanations regarding the grounds for and course of the intervention, the coercive measures used, the grounds for the detention and the detainee’s access to a lawyer. (PAP)
