Remembrance Institute to move for extradition of Stalinist judge Michnik

In his first decision after Tuesday's nomination as the head of the prosecution department of the National Remembrance Institute (IPN), Witold Kulesza said he would motion for the extradition of Stalinist-era judge Stefan Michnik. Kulesza said he had examined three verdicts made by Michnik and at least one of them constitutes a blatant "courtroom crime" of sentencing a defendant to death with a breach of elementary rules of criminal, material and trial law. Michnik had sentenced several opposition activists to death. He is now 70 years old and lives in Sweden. IPN had been created as an institution which would prosecute Communist and Nazi crimes against the Polish nation. (Gazeta Wyborcza, page 4) T.J.