Poland Grim Diversion

By Jamie Murphy

The mood has changed abruptly from the soporific to the macabre. And yet despite some grisly testimony, Polish public reaction to the trial of four Polish secret policemen for the abduction of Father Jerzy Popieluszko remains subdued. Poles have grown accustomed to switching on the state-controlled radio broadcast at 10:30 every night and listening to the latest installment of death and deception as defense attorneys and prosecutors alike in Torun's Courtroom 40 continue to tolerate a flood of contradictions from the witness stand. Perhaps to divert attention from Torun, early last week Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski paid an unprecedented visit to the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, where the banned trade union Solidarity had its roots. There he talked with workers about high food prices while hunching over work benches, shaking hands and kissing women's cheeks.

Jaruzelski's trip notwithstanding, there was no shortage of drama at the trial. General Zenon Platek, 58, the suspended official of the Interior Ministry assigned to monitor church activities, made the surprising claim that the ministry was aware of a plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II during his 1983 visit to Poland and that several people with explosives were arrested. A Vatican spokesman said last week that he was not aware of such a plot, as did Warsaw's official spokesman, Jerzy Urban. Platek also claimed that just before Popieluszko's murder, the priest was to be dispatched to Rome. Vatican officials denied the statement.

Center stage last week, however, belonged to Dr. Maria Byrdy, a retired pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Popieluszko after his body was pulled from the Vistula River reservoir. Speaking to a rapt audience, Byrdy, 75, stated that contrary to her previous opinion, she found it impossible to determine specifically what had been the cause of Popieluszko's death.

The forensic expert testified without emotion that the activist priest died from a combination of severe beating, shock, strangulation by the nylon cord with which he had been trussed and from his inability to expel the blood and vomit that flooded through his respiratory system after the attack. Dispassionately, Byrdy held up one of the two rolls of stained gauze that Popieluszko's attackers had forced into their victim's mouth.

Byrdy's testimony shattered the defense of Grzegorz Piotrowski, the leader of the three secret policemen who admit to having beaten and bound the priest. Although in his testimony he made no attempt to conceal his own part in the kidnaping and killing, Piotrowski has based his hope to escape the death sentence on the earlier autopsy conclusion that the priest had strangled on his bonds. Popieluszko was trussed by Piotrowski's assistants, co-defendants and former secret police officers Leszek Pekala and Waldemar Chmielewski. By suggesting that the savage beating contributed to Popieluszko's death, Byrdy may have destroyed Piotrowski's only defense.

Just one day after Byrdy's testimony was completed, the court was subjected to an even more wrenching session. For 40 minutes, judges, lawyers and spectators watched a black-and-white videotape showing Popieluszko's body moments after it was pulled from the reservoir. The effect of the videotape upon the defendants was clear: Pekala cried openly; Chmielewski bowed his head; and, for his part, Piotrowski appeared to be taking deep breaths. Only the fourth defendant, former Secret Police Colonel Adam Pietruszka, remained impassive.

Prior to Byrdy's appearance, General Platek gave testimony that contradicted sworn statements by the very men that he had assigned to investigate the case. He claimed, for example, that because he was drowsy from the effect of sleeping pills, he had failed to realize the significance of the fact that a ministry car had been spotted in the city of Bydgoszcz the night of the priest's death. Platek also insisted that the date on a travel permit that Piotrowski had used the night Popieluszko was killed had been altered before it was turned over as evidence in the Interior Ministry's investigation of the crime.

Lawyers for the priest's family seemed to be engaged in a losing battle with state prosecutors and defense lawyers to bring new information to light. The jumbled testimony and the court's obvious reluctance to grill the witnesses for evidence that might implicate high government officials suggest that the truth in Torun may never be found.

With reporting by John Moody/Warsaw