Debski murder trial opens in Warsaw

The trial opened in Warsaw yesterday of a woman charged with complicity in the mob-style murder of a former government minister, while an Austrian court is to try an alleged gangland boss for ordering the killing. Jacek Debski, who was Sports Minister from 1997-2000 in the right-wing government of the day, was found dead in April 2001 near a Warsaw restaurant where he had been dining with friends. Prosecutors charged his female companion, known as Halina G., with complicity in the murder. She led Debski out of the restaurant to a spot where a paid assassin shot him in the head, allegedly on the order of a suspected mobster who lives in Austria. Austrian court authorities said Jeremiasz Baranski, a Polish-born businessman with Austrian citizenship who, according to Halina G. masterminded one of the most notorious murders in post-communist Poland, would go on trial in Vienna on Thursday. (Reuters) A.C.