Polish President Karol Nawrocki returned to Warsaw on 30 October after cutting short a flight to Senegal, as police entered the country's Constitutional Tribunal building and its leadership was suspended.
Riot officers moved onto the court's premises in the capital after protesters threw objects at police outside, according to a Reuters report carried by RTE. The tribunal's website stated that its president, Bogdan Swieczkowski, had been suspended, and Kyiv Independent reported that deputy president Bartlomiej Sochanski was suspended as well.
"At a moment like this, the president must be in Poland. I am cutting short my flight to Senegal. I am returning," Nawrocki wrote on X while airborne.
Kyiv Independent reported that three people were detained and that demonstrators breached a perimeter fence in front of the building. Police said, in comments quoted by RTE, that officers entered the premises after dangerous objects were thrown at them.
The tribunal's leadership rejected the suspensions. In statements carried by Kyiv Independent, it said its website had been taken over unlawfully and described the actions against it as an attempt at a coup. Arkadiusz Mularczyk, a former deputy foreign minister, made the same accusation, saying that legally appointed judges were being barred from the court.
In a post published by Donald Tusk (X), the prime minister said restoring the rule of law was his government's duty and that after years of what he called lawlessness the process required firm action.
Prosecutor General and Justice Minister Waldemar Zurek told reporters he had filed five requests to strip judicial immunity. Four concern Swieczkowski and one Sochanski, according to Kyiv Independent.
Anna Korwin-Piotrowska, a judge elected to the tribunal by the current parliamentary majority whose appointment remains contested, called a general assembly of the court's judges for 3 November, Kyiv Independent reported.
The dispute dates back years. Nawrocki, an ally of the former Law and Justice government, refused earlier this year to swear in three of the six judges nominated by parliament. Swieczkowski, a deputy justice minister under Law and Justice, declined to allow judges chosen by the present majority to take up their duties. Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski said Tusk's government was carrying out a coup against the tribunal, RTE reported.