Lech Wałęsa, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Polish president, will have to apologize to Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of the ruling Law and Justice party, for suggesting he bore responsibility for the 2010 air crash that killed his twin brother, then Polish President Lech Kaczyński.
A court in Gdańsk ruled Thursday that Wałęsa will have to issue an apology on his Facebook page, as well as in a newspaper and a weekly magazine. However, it rejected Kaczyński’s request for 30,000 złoty (€7,000) in damages. The court also denied Kaczyński’s demand that Wałęsa apologize for suggesting he was mentally ill.
“Freedom of speech is not an absolute freedom,” the judge said. Wałęsa said he will appeal the verdict.
Wałęsa made the suggestions about the plane crash on his Facebook page, which has become one of his main methods of public communication. The 2010 air disaster killed 96 people, including Lech Kaczyński and many senior officials, when the plane tried to land in dense fog at a dilapidated military airfield in Smolensk, Russia.
Although investigations showed the bulk of the responsibility lay with undertrained military pilots committing a cascade of errors while trying to land in terrible conditions, Law and Justice (PiS) turned the crash into a potent political symbol. The party suggested that the blame lay with Russia and with the Civic Platform party, which ruled Poland at the time.
Wałęsa accused Jarosław Kaczyński, who was in Warsaw at the time of the crash, of being aware of the bad weather conditions but issuing an order by phone for the aircraft to land.
Wałęsa and Kaczyński have had a poisonous relationship for many years.
Wałęsa was the head of the Solidarity labor union in the early 1980s, and then led the effort to remove the communists from power in 1989, during which time the Kaczyński twins were his advisers. They had an acrimonious breakup once Wałęsa was elected president.
Kaczyński has accused Wałęsa of being an informant for the communist-era secret police in the 1970s, while Wałęsa has become a fierce enemy of PiS. He accuses the party of violating the Polish constitution with its program of legal reforms, and has led efforts to galvanize public opposition to PiS ahead of next year’s parliamentary election.