Polish border guards halt former counterintelligence chief Piotr Pytel over outdated travel ban

Incident at Katowice Airport

On Saturday morning, retired general Piotr Pytel arrived at Katowice Airport in Pyrzowice for a scheduled holiday flight to Turkey with his wife. During routine passport control, officers from the Silesian Border Guard Division identified an active entry barring the former head of the Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW) from leaving the country. Officers escorted Pytel to a secondary inspection area to verify records across security databases, confirming the restriction remained active in their system. After completing verification procedures, Pytel was directed back to the public departures hall without being placed under arrest. Silesian Border Guard Division spokesperson Szymon Mościcki addressed the actions taken by officers during the border check.

We as the Border Guard, border guard officers respect the law, we do not make the law.

Administrative breakdown between court and border services

The travel restriction stemmed from an investigation launched in 2016 by the military division of the Warsaw District Prosecutor's Office concerning contacts between counterintelligence leadership and Russia's Federal Security Service. Prosecutor Jan Zarosa originally ordered Pytel's detention and imposed the ban on leaving the country in December 2017. On 22 February 2018, a Warsaw district court judge, Beata Adamczyk-Łabuda, accepted a defense complaint and formally revoked all preventive measures against Pytel. However, court authorities did not transmit the revocation decision to the Border Guard Headquarters, leaving the electronic block active in border control systems. Warsaw district prosecution spokesperson Piotr Antoni Skiba stated that case files regarding the lifted measures only reached prosecutors many months later.

Legacy of discontinued counterintelligence investigation

The underlying criminal probe against Pytel, fellow former counterintelligence head Janusz Nosek, and Colonel Krzysztof Dusza examined allegations of exceeding authority without required prime ministerial approval. A court had previously deemed Pytel's 2017 detention unjustified and awarded him compensation for the arrest. Prosecutor Janusz Ochocki from the Warsaw military division formally discontinued the entire investigation on 22 April 2024 due to a lack of evidence and the absence of statutory elements of an offense. Following the dismissal of charges, both Pytel and Nosek received official victim status in a separate inquiry into prosecutorial conduct overseen by the National Prosecutor's Office. Pytel described the border check after officers informed him of the restriction.

I handed over my documents for Border Guard control. After a longer moment of checking them, I was escorted to personal control. There I found out that I would definitely not be able to fly out today because I have an active ban on leaving the country.

Ministerial intervention and political reaction

Following the airport stoppage, Minister of Justice and Prosecutor General Waldemar Żurek intervened on Saturday to resolve the administrative discrepancy. Żurek stated publicly that actions were taken immediately to ensure Pytel could exercise his legal right to freedom of movement. The minister criticized the handling of justice administration during the tenure of former minister Zbigniew Ziobro, citing prolonged procedural oversights. Żurek pointed out that the judge delivered the February 2018 ruling to the prosecutor's office one year and eight months after issuing it. Corrective steps taken by the ministry on Saturday cleared the systemic record, allowing Pytel to travel abroad.