Poland asks US to extradite its ex-justice minister

WARSAW — Poland formally asked the U.S. on Monday to arrest and extradite former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro, seeking to prosecute the fugitive politician from the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party for alleged abuse of power, diversion of public funds to political allies and spying on opponents. Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-European government has pledged to hold PiS accountable for what it claims was corruption during the party’s rule from 2015 to 2023. Ziobro, a highly controversial figure, pushed through sweeping judicial reforms that gave the government of the day broad influence over public prosecutors and disciplinary control over judges, putting Poland on a collision course with Brussels. The request for provisional detention and extradition was delivered through diplomatic channels via Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek, the National Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement. The extradition request covers 19 of the 26 alleged offenses for which prosecutors want to charge Ziobro. The charges include leading an organized criminal group inside the justice ministry, abuse of power, rigging grant competitions to benefit government-friendly organizations, and deploying Pegasus spyware against political opponents. The former government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, which was politically allied to the former PiS government in Warsaw, had granted Ziobro asylum but the new Budapest government under Péter Magyar promised to hand him over. Pre-empting trouble in Hungary, Ziobro flew to the U.S. in May where he was hired by TV Republika, a PiS-friendly Polish broadcaster, as a political commentator. “The United States is freedom. Freedom you can actually fight for,” Ziobro said at the time. Ziobro has called the charges “fabricated” and accused Tusk of pursuing a political vendetta against him. He has also vowed to take legal steps against Tusk and his ministers should PiS come back to power after an election slated for the fall of 2027. However, that electoral landscape has become more complicated after a group of nearly 40 MPs, led by former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, split from PiS last week. Still, polls suggest that a Tusk-led coalition would fall short of the support needed to secure a majority in the next parliament.