Friday 30 October 2026
Riot Police Line the Tribunal Fence as Two Judges Claim Poland's Top Court
Helmeted police line the fence of the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw while a crowd carrying Polish flags fills the street outside. Hours earlier, Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska had suspended the court's president, Bogdan Swieczkowski, and his deputy for one month and taken charge of the court herself.
Swieczkowski says he remains president and calls the takeover a coup. Warsaw police say their officers stayed on the grounds on written requests, after objects were thrown and three people were detained. Opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski came to the fence and warned that Poland is becoming a police state. President Karol Nawrocki turned his plane around on the way to Senegal, saying the president had to be in Poland, and Swieczkowski, shut out of his own tribunal, came to the Presidential Palace that night.
The short puts the night in a line of earlier moves. The government seized public television, radio, and the national news agency in December 2023, and it has refused to publish this tribunal's rulings since March 2024. Prime Minister Donald Tusk answered that restoring the rule of law is painful and requires decisive action.
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