Journalist fined by court over claims against judge: report

The journalist, Wojciech Biedroń, was sentenced to a fine after he reported on the case of judge Wojciech Łączewski, who communicated on Twitter without giving his real name and allegedly offered to help undermine Poland’s conservative government, the wiadomosci.wp.pl online news service has reported.

The website quoted Biedroń as commenting in a Twitter post on Tuesday that he was sentenced to a fine of PLN 3,000 (around EUR 693, USD 784) after the court decided that he erroneously claimed the judge faced "disciplinary" instead of "explanatory” proceedings over the allegations against him.

The verdict is not subject to appeal, Biedroń said, as cited by wiadomosci.wp.pl.

Meanwhile, the judge himself, Wojciech Łączewski, has faced no formal charges, the website reported.

According to the wpolityce.pl website, Łączewski in the past established private correspondence through Twitter with a person he mistook for a well-known journalist critical of Poland’s ruling conservatives. Łączewski argued in his posts for "a new strategy in a political struggle against the government," wpolityce.pl said.

Łączewski has admitted to running a social media profile under a different name, but denied engaging in such correspondence, wiadomosci.wp.pl reported. He has also testified that his computer had been hacked into, the website said.

It cited media reports as suggesting that the judge's claim of hacking was false and that he was seeking to remove suspicion from himself.

Biedroń is a current-affairs commentator for Poland’s Sieci magazine and the wpolityce.pl website.

(gs/pk)

Source: wiadomosci.wp.pl, wpolityce.pl