WARSAW: Polish police are investigating after arresting a man suspected of plotting an attack against Prime Minister Donald Tusk and defence minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, the interior ministry told AFP on Sunday (Oct 11).
Searches were continuing at the suspect's home, ministry spokeswoman Karolina Galecka said, adding: "Information about this man will of course then be verified by the police."
This came after Tusk and interior minister Marcin Kierwinski said that a suspect had been detained.
"The man threatening an attack has been detained," Tusk wrote on X, praising the police for their "swift and decisive action".
The suspect, a man in his 60s, was arrested in the southwestern region of Lower Silesia, Kierwinski told public broadcaster TVP Info.
"The services got to him through a thorough analysis of content posted online," he added, saying the man's "contacts and his activity on the internet are being examined".
Earlier, the interior ministry said Tusk and Kosiniak-Kamysz may have been the targets of assassination attempts.
Galecka said police had been alerted by the State Protection Service (SOP) following reports of a potential threat against the premier and defence minister.
Members of the police, SOP and Poland's internal security agency met on Sunday to discuss the case.
"We are treating this matter as deadly serious," a spokesperson for the minister-coordinator of special services, Jacek Dobrzynski, told reporters afterwards.
He said threats to Polish officials had become increasingly common but added that, in this case, there was "a strong likelihood" they could have been carried out.
MULTIPLE ATTACKS
Poland, a member of both NATO and the EU, has been on high alert following a series of stabbings over the past week, which Tusk on Thursday denounced as a "cult of violence".
Police said Sunday that nearly 64,000 institutions had been inspected and 117 people detained following violent incidents on school grounds.
In September, Polish intelligence services arrested a 17-year-old Nazi sympathiser suspected of plotting an attack against a school and a mosque.
Two other minors were later detained in connection with the arrest, the internal security agency said.
Warsaw, a staunch ally of Ukraine since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, has repeatedly warned of Russian sabotage and hybrid warfare on Polish soil, accusations rejected by Moscow.
However, interior minister Kierwinski told TVP Info that "at this stage it is probably too early to claim ... that any foreign angle is possible" in the alleged assassination attempt.
"It rather appears that this is a man from very radical groups, establishing very radical contacts via the internet with various people," he said.