Activist who struck judge in the face with large cream cake faces charges

A communist-era opposition activist in Poland is to be charged after pushing a cream cake into a judge's face during a case against former Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak.



Mariusz Mrozek, spokesman for the Warsaw police, confirmed the decision on Thursday after Judge Anna Wielgolewska lodged a complaint. The incident occurred at a Warsaw district court after the judge temporarily closed a session to the public to hear evidence from two psychiatrists as to whether Kiszczak, now 87, was fit enough to be tried.





Kiszczak was set to be tried for the fifth time over responsibility for the Wujek Coal Mine Massacre of December 1981 in Katowice, Silesia. Nine men died when police and soldiers tried to break up a strike at the mine, with the protest launched three days after the government's imposition of martial law. Having heard evidence from the psychiatrists, the judge called for a break in the sitting.


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However, as she emerged from the courtroom, former opposition activist Zbigniew M. (name witheld under Polish privacy laws) struck her in the face with a large cream-cake. Wielgolewska later ruled that Kiszczak's trial should be suspended owing to the defendant's health. Zbigniew M. could face a sentence of up to a year in prison, for “insulting a public functionary.”