Owner of shooting range charged over target with NBP president's face on it

Yesterday the Lodz prosecutor's office accused Piotr M., the owner of a shooting range whose clients were allowed to shoot to the image of the face of Leszek Balcerowicz, the president of the National Bank of Poland (NBP), as an insult. Piotr M. who confessed to committing the offense may be sentenced to two years in prison. Targets with the image of Balcerowicz appeared in April at the shooting range in Piotrkowska Street in Lodz. The first target with Balcerowicz's face and an inscription "from a forever grateful citizen" was brought to the range by one of Piotr M's clients. Other clients started copying the target and after several days the owner of the shooting range photocopied over 200 such targets. Several days later a group of politicians from the Freedom Union (UW) informed the Prosecutor General that the law was being broken. "The act of shooting an image of a human being is one more silly prank proving how savaged society is becoming. It is also a crime," they said. (Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 4) A.Z.