Poland’s prime minister says police have caught the man behind a threat on his life. Donald Tusk said on Sunday, October 11, that a man accused of plotting to assassinate him and his defence minister, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, had gone into custody, The Guardian reports. “The man threatening an attack has been detained,” Tusk wrote on X, according to The Guardian, which says he praised the police for their “swift and decisive action.” The Guardian adds that Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński confirmed the arrest.
The outlets this desk read give no name, age or nationality for the suspect, and none reports a motive or says whether prosecutors have filed charges. Those gaps leave the core question of who planned what, and how far any plan went, seemingly open for now.
The day started with an official alarm. Interior Ministry spokesperson Karolina Gałecka wrote on X that the ministry had ordered authorities to take action “in connection with the information received by the police concerning a possible assassination attempt on the prime minister... as well as the deputy prime minister,” according to The Guardian’s rendering; Kosiniak-Kamysz also serves as deputy prime minister. Al Jazeera, writing with Reuters material, quotes Gałecka as saying the ministry ordered “action to be taken in this matter.”
DW, writing with AP, dpa and Reuters material, reports that the emergency meeting took place at the Internal Security Agency’s (ABW) Counter-Terrorism Center. The Guardian says members of the police, the State Protection Service (SOP) and the internal security agency attended, and a Guardian photo caption says Tusk learned of the threat first thing on Sunday morning.
Officials signaled that they took the threat seriously. “We are treating this matter as deadly serious,” Jacek Dobrzyński, spokesperson for the minister-coordinator of special services, told journalists after the meeting, according to The Guardian. He added, in The Guardian’s account, that “month by month, year by year, more and more various threats and menacing messages reach the police, SOP, and the services concerning Poland and Poles.” Al Jazeera, citing local media, gives his description more briefly, saying authorities treated the information as “serious,” and reports that Polsat News quoted him as saying officials agreed on further action without giving details.
How the tip arrived remains thinly sourced. Private broadcaster Radio Zet reported that police had received an email with information about the threat, according to Al Jazeera. This desk could not confirm that detail in any other outlet it read.
The plot claim landed in a country already on edge. Three knife attacks at schools in four days have left at least one person dead and others injured, including children, DW reports. According to DW, a 19-year-old student injured nine people at a vocational school in the central Mazovian province on Wednesday; on Thursday a 15-year-old killed a school caretaker and injured two others at his former school in Leszczydół-Nowiny; and on Saturday a 21-year-old woman attacked an adult education school in Warsaw, wounding three women. BBC News describes the caretaker as a 37-year-old woman.
Police have detained 117 people across the country for carrying knives or dangerous weapons, or for threatening to attack schools or students, and have checked 64,000 schools, DW reports. DW also says police reported on Friday that cybercrime investigators found no evidence that a social media challenge drove the wave of youth violence or that anyone coordinated the attacks.
At a Sunday crisis meeting on the school attacks, Tusk blamed online culture. “These are very often spontaneous actions inspired by online activity,” he said, according to BBC News, and “we are not dealing with any group organized on a big scale,” according to both BBC News and DW. He acknowledged that “some of the people detained are active in the ultraright environment,” DW and BBC News report, and pointed to rising online searches for Nazi content and for “mass killers who have become idols online.”
Neither the government nor the outlets have linked the threat against Tusk and Kosiniak-Kamysz to the school attacks. DW notes separately that Poland, which borders Ukraine, faces growing security threats from Russian hybrid attacks, but it does not tie Sunday’s plot claim to Russia. Whether prosecutors release the suspect’s identity and any charges seems likely to decide how much weight this episode carries in Polish politics.
