Polish prosecutors charge national security boss in classified documents case

WARSAW (Reuters) -Polish prosecutors have charged the head of the National Security Bureau (BBN) and the former defence minister with wrongfully declassifying secret military plans for use in electoral campaigning.

The charges look set to deepen a legal dispute over the security clearance of newly-appointed BBN chief Slawomir Cenckiewicz, part of a bitter conflict between nationalist President Karol Nawrocki and the centrist government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

The head of the BBN is part of the President's office and advises him on security matters.

Cenckiewicz won an appeal in June against a government decision that removed his access to classified information. The Prime Minister's office then lodged a complaint in a higher court asking for the original decision to be upheld.

Earlier in August the spokesperson for Poland's security services said that Cenckiewicz does not currently have access to classified documents.

The charges relate to the use of military documents by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party during the 2023 parliamentary election campaign. PiS lost its majority in 2023, allowing Tusk to become prime minister at the head of a broad pro-European coalition.

Nawrocki and Cenckiewicz are allies of PiS.

The defence minister at the time, Mariusz Blaszczak, and Cenckiewicz, who then served as head of the Military History Office, said the documents showed that Tusk was ready to abandon the eastern half of Poland in the event of a Russian invasion when he was prime minister from 2007 to 2014.

PiS's opponents said the documents were taken out of context and were part of secret planning for various scenarios which should not have been revealed for electoral gain.

"The prosecutor accused Mariusz Blaszczak of exceeding his authority... by removing the "TOP SECRET" and "SECRET" classifications from fragments of strategic-level operational planning documents," prosecutors said in a statement.

Cenckiewicz rejected the accusations against him, saying in a post on X that they were "driven by revenge" and "completely unjustified".

Blaszczak called the charges an "act of revenge" from Tusk.

Prosecutors said Cenckiewicz had sought to benefit by using the documents in a documentary television series critical of Tusk which he created.

A former defence ministry official and a former member of the National Broadcasting Council were also charged. They had no immediate comment.

Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, a member of Tusk's Civic Coalition, said the charges should "be a warning to all politicians that none should dare to play with Poland's security for the sake of party gain."

(Reporting by Alan Charlish, Editing by William Maclean)