Investigation dismissed

The District Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw formally dropped its criminal proceedings against former Polish president Lech Wałęsa on 24 September 2026. Wałęsa had faced allegations of giving false testimony during an April 2016 interrogation by the Institute of National Remembrance. Investigators had accused the former trade union leader of lying when he denied signing more than 50 secret security service documents discovered in the residence of the late communist-era interior minister, General Czesław Kiszczak. Deputy District Prosecutor Wojciech Sitek announced the dismissal after determining that the evidentiary review produced no certain grounds to establish that Wałęsa authored the records.

“There are no certain grounds to find that Lech Wałęsa is the author of the documents revealed in the Kiszczak files, and therefore there is no evidence that he lied during the interrogation that took place on 13 April 2016, denying that he had prepared them.”

Flaws in handwriting evidence

The dismissal set aside the forensic conclusions previously used to charge the former president. Previous indictments relied on handwriting assessments conducted by the Jan Sehn Institute of Forensic Research in Kraków, which had attributed most signatures on the files of secret collaborator "Bolek" to Wałęsa. The prosecutor handling the review found that those expert findings were not categorical. The handwriting experts lacked verified reference samples produced under official supervision in the presence of an investigator.

Furthermore, the comparative material used in the assessment showed chronological gaps. Experts evaluated 157 handwritten manuscripts from between 19 December 1970 and 19 September 1980, with over half dated to December 1970 and 1971. In contrast, the 136 comparative documents supplied to the examiners dated across 1963 to 2016, providing only isolated samples from the early 1970s. When presented with the comparative files, Wałęsa confirmed his authorship for two signatures and identified five others as probable.

Procedural history and witness testimony

The case originated in 2017 following an order from then Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro. On 30 November 2023, Warsaw District Prosecutor Mariusz Dubowski submitted an indictment against Wałęsa to the District Court for Warszawa-Śródmieście. In June 2024, the court returned the indictment to the prosecution to address deficiencies in the preparatory proceedings.

In the dismissal justification, prosecutors also cited witness testimonies regarding Wałęsa's literacy levels during the 1970s and 1980s. Witnesses stated that Wałęsa struggled with written composition during that period and that documents he signed while leading the Solidarity union were drafted on his behalf by other individuals.

Reactions from historians

The decision drew criticism from conservative researchers who had studied the security archives. Historian Sławomir Cenckiewicz, whom Wałęsa previously sued unsuccessfully for defamation over claims regarding the files, questioned the characterization of the union leader's writing abilities.

“These madmen claim that a secondary illiterate stood at the head of the 10-million-strong Solidarity movement.”

The prosecutor's decision closes the perjury charges that had remained pending against Wałęsa since late 2023.