Magdalenka gangster was police informer claim former officers

Two former police officers from Słubice claim that Igor Pikus, the Belarussian criminal killed during last month's bloodshed in Magdalenka, had been a police informer. They say he was recruited by police and prosecutors in Gorzów as early as 1998, having already been the subject of an international arrest warrant. Both the Gorzów police and prosecutor denied the allegation and questioned the reliability of the two officers, revealing that they had been dismissed from the force due to accusations of corruption. An anonymous high-ranking officer disclosed to Gazeta Wyborcza that the name Aleksander Wołodin (an alias once used by Pikus) was indeed present in police records, but in 2000. "He is reported on not as an agent, but as a person the police were interested in," said the officer. He added that it might have been a different person, though, using the same name. (Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 7) K.Ż.