Today marks the 6th anniversary of the death of Colonel Ryszard Kukliński.

One of the top officers of the General Staff in the Polish Armed Forces during the 1970s in communist Poland, he defected to the United States on the eve of the introduction of Martial Law in December 1981.

During that period he supplied the Americans with plans of the operation as well as other secret documents of the Warsaw Pact, including information about the Soviet Red Army.

Kuklinski was handed a death sentence in absentia by a court martial in 1982. It was not until the late 1990s that in a free and democratic Poland his sentence was reversed and his honour reinstated.

He died of a stroke in Tampa, Florida in 2004 and his ashes were brought to Warsaw two months later.

Ryszard Kuklinski remains a controversial figure in contemporary Polish history and in the opinion of his compatriots. For years many figures, including former president Lech Walesa, had been hesitant in assessing the colonel’s patriotism. (di/jb)