WARSAW

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, said Monday that a 44-year-old man suspected of attempting to firebomb the headquarters of ruling party Civic Platform (PO) last week had previously threatened his life.

Tusk wrote about the arrest in a post on X, saying Krzysztof B., a resident of Losice in eastern Poland, had been charged in June over death threats directed at him.

"In June, he was charged with threatening me with death, and in October, he tried to set fire to the PO headquarters. (Robert) Bakiewicz and (Jaroslaw) Kaczynski must be pleased. It was at their rally a few days earlier that he first shouted not to fear the courts, to pull out the weeds and throw napalm so they don't grow back," Tusk wrote on X.

Tusk was referring to the words of right-wing activist Robert Bakiewicz, who said during a Law and Justice rally on Oct. 11: "Don't be afraid of prosecutors and courts, these people will pay the price ... justice must be served, that these weeds must be uprooted from Polish soil and napalm thrown on it so that they never grow back." Jaroslaw Kaczynski is the leader of the main opposition party, nationalist Law and Justice (PiS).

Krzysztof B. was detained in connection with the alleged arson attack outside PO’s headquarters on Wiejska Street in central Warsaw on Friday. Witnesses said the suspect threw a Molotov cocktail at the office’s entrance but was pushed away by a bystander. The device broke before igniting and no one was injured. Warsaw police said the suspect is under investigation for attempted arson and criminal threats and that the case is ongoing.

The spokesperson for the district prosecutor's office in Siedlce, Prosecutor Krystyna Golabek, announced that on June 30, the prosecutor's office filed an indictment against Krzysztof B. with the district court in Siedlce. "The indictment concerned, among other things, that in May in Platerow, via the X website, he made life-threatening threats against the prime minister of the Republic of Poland, Donald Tusk. These threats raised a justified fear in the injured party that they would be carried out," Golabek said. Krzysztof B. was found guilty and fined PLN 3,000 (euro 730).

Deputy Minister of National Defense Cezary Tomczyk wrote Monday that the threats against the prime minister and the attempted arson of the PO office "are not incidents in a vacuum—they are the result of a political method in which words become a trigger."

"Violence begins with words. When Bakiewicz's slogans about 'pulling out the weeds,' 'napalm,' and 'not fearing the courts' are uttered from the political platform, the threshold for accepting aggression is lowered. First, the verbal dismantling of norms, then the actions of those who take these words literally," Tomczyk wrote.

In September, a car belonging to Tusk’s family was stolen from near his home in Sopot and four days later, police detained a 41-year-old Sopot resident at the airport as he was preparing to fly to Bulgaria. The incident prompted scrutiny and personnel consequences at the State Protection Service (SOP) responsible for the PM’s protection.

Political violence in Poland is relatively rare, although in 2019, Gdansk mayor Pawel Adamowicz was killed during a charity event and in May 2024 Tusk reported receiving death threats following the shooting of Slovakia’s prime minister.