Poland just charged a man with plotting to bomb the prime minister
1 hour ago · 14 October 2026Share
Explosive devices found in a vehicle trunk. File photo. Federal Bureau of Investigation · Public domain
Polish prosecutors in Warsaw just charged a 66-year-old man with nine offences.
The plan, they say, was to attack Prime Minister Donald Tusk with explosives.
He's named only as Krzysztof N. That's Polish privacy law. The charges came one day ago, from the district prosecutor's office in Warsaw.
So what's the most serious charge? Plotting to forcibly overthrow the state. That means the prime minister and the whole Council of Ministers. With explosives.
Piotr Antoni Skiba, the prosecutor's spokesperson, says quote "the most serious charge is for planning to forcibly overthrow state authorities, including the prime minister and cabinet, using explosives".
On its own, that charge carries two to 15 years in prison.
And there was a second target. Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, Poland's Defence Minister, who's also deputy prime minister.
Police picked the suspect up three days ago, in Wrocław, in southwest Poland. They searched his home the same day.
And here's what they found. About a dozen improvised explosive devices, built to look like fragmentation grenades. Metal ball-bearings packed into firework-style pyrotechnics. A crossbow. Sharp-tipped metal bolts. What investigators believe are blank-firing or pneumatic guns.
So this wasn't just talk. There were working explosives sitting in his house.
The alarm started three days ago too. Poland's security services said they'd received credible information pointing to a high probability of an assassination attempt against Donald Tusk and Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz. Karolina Gałecka, a spokesperson for the interior ministry, says the State Protection Service spotted the threat first, then passed it to police.
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Entrance to Polish Parliament (Sejm), Warsaw. File photo. Magdalena Bielecka · CC BY-SA 3.0
According to Piotr Antoni Skiba, it all came together after an anonymous tip. Someone sent the State Protection Service a recording of a conversation, said to be with the suspect himself. On that recording, he said he'd gathered several hundred people who shared his beliefs, and that they'd help him overthrow the Polish government by force.
That's the detail that turned a threat report into formal charges.
The other eight charges? Promoting a war of aggression, including in Ukraine. And inciting crimes based on nationality, ethnicity, race and political views.
Gazeta Wyborcza reports he'd been posting videos online for months, calling on others who shared his views to fight the authorities, with antisemitic and anti-Ukrainian views mixed in. Rzeczpospolita found he ran a Facebook page called the Radical Polish Resistance Movement. Almost 8,000 people followed it.
Marcin Kierwiński, Poland's Interior Minister, says the suspect had been very active in groups that promote these views.
The suspect has pleaded not guilty on all nine counts. He's refused to explain himself to investigators. A Polish court was due to rule one day ago on whether to keep him in custody.
So is this foreign interference? Prosecutors say there's no sign of that so far. But they say the question is still being investigated.
And this isn't the only threat Poland is dealing with right now.
In a separate case, a 46-year-old man was detained in Oborniki, in western Poland. He's accused of publicly calling for the murder of Donald Tusk and Włodzimierz Czarzasty, the speaker of parliament. He's been charged with inciting murder, which carries up to three years. He says he insulted officials. He says he did not incite murder.
All this lands in a country already on edge. Poland had just been through three knife attacks on schools in a single week. One of them was fatal. Donald Tusk said it reflected a pattern of violence taking hold. Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland's Foreign Minister, said days before this that Russia's hybrid actions in Europe could end up causing deaths.
Prosecutors haven't said whether they think the two things are connected. For now, the official line is simple. The outside-involvement question stays open. And right now, this one suspect is the only person facing the most serious charge on the books.
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