Poland Not Giving Up On Mazur Extradition

By Robert Strybel

The Polish authorities do not intend to drop their efforts to bring 62-year-old Polish-born Chicago businessman to justice, despite the ruling of a judge who recently denied their extradition request. Chicago Federal Judge Arlander Keys cited faulty evidence and witnesses who lacked credibility as grounds for rejecting the appeal to return Mazur to his native land, where he is wanted in connection with the 1998 gang-land style killing of former National Police Commandant Marek Papala.

Papala, who had taken a hard line against Poland’s criminal underworld, was shot dead while sitting in his car in front of his Warsaw home. In 2002, Mazur was held for questioning in the case but later released by Poland’s then ruling post-communist authorities with whom he was said to have a special relationship. But the crime- and graft-fighting government led by the twin Kaczynski brothers Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc = PiS) party has thrown its weight behind the case against Mazur, after underworld witnesses testified he had offered them $40,000 for the commandant’s assassination.

The millionaire businessman, who holds both Polish and US citizenship, has lived in America for the past 44 years and has engineered various business deals with Poland for major American corporations. In Poland he has been accused of being an informer for the communist-era secret services and is also suspected of links with organized crime. Mazur was arrested in late 2006 by the US authorities in response to a Polish extradition request. Led into Judge Keys’ courtroom in leg irons and an orange prison jump suit, he wept with joy after hearing he could leave a free man after spending nine months in an American jail pending extradition proceedings.

Asked outside his palatial residence in the Chicago suburb of Glenview how he would react to Poland’s attempts to pursue the case, Mazur replied: “Next question, please!” Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro admitted there had been shortcomings in the Mazur case documents prepared under the preceding post-communist government, but said Poland would file a motion to have the case re-examined by a different American court. He reiterated his earlier charges that ex-communist Leszek Miller, Poland’s prime minister from 2001 to 2004, had gone to the scene of the Papala killing to destroy evidence and later obstructed the investigation. Miller has threatened to take Ziobro him to court over the charges.

According to Justice Ministry spokeswoman Anna Adamiak-Derendarz, a major stumbling block in coordinating extradition efforts with the US authorities had stemmed from conflicting Polish and American legal practices. “Much of the time we had to keep explaining how the Polish legal system worked and what criteria were used under different circumstances,” she told a news conference. But the spokeswoman added that Poland was working closely with the US Justice Department in the matter. A hopeful sign was the fact that Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. Federal Attorney in Chicago, disagreed with Judge Keys’ 69-page ruling and said Justice Department lawyers would evaluate the document to consider possible options.

However things develop, one thing seems certain: the Mazur case is likely to remain open and continue generating news, interest and controversy for some time to come. At this point, it is anybody’ guess how it will all end.