Poland`s Jaruzelski Goes On Trial Over Martial Law

The eighth defendant, former internal affairs minister Czeslaw Kiszczak, was absent due to medical reasons.

Poland's last communist leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, and seven other Soviet-era officials went on trial on Friday over the declaration of martial law more than a quarter of a century ago.

Poland's National Remembrance Institute accuses the defendants, now grey-haired elderly men, of violating the law and flouting human rights with the 1981 decision, which led to the deaths of dozens of people and the jailing of hundreds more.

Seven of the defendants, including the 85-year-old Jaruzelski in his trademark dark glasses and onetime Communist Party first secretary Stanislaw Kania, appeared in the Warsaw courtroom, where the desks were packed high with files.

The eighth defendant, former internal affairs minister Czeslaw Kiszczak, was absent due to medical reasons.

The court rejected a request from Jaruzelski and the other defendants to have the full 500-page indictment read out.

"Given the huge social interest in the case... we call for the whole indictment to be presented," Jaruzelski said.

There were frequent interruptions in Friday's hearing because of poor air conditioning and a weak audio system.

The court set the next hearing in the case for September 25.

The defendants deny the accusations, saying they acted out of "higher necessity" to silence the anti-communist Solidarity trade union and avert a threatened Soviet invasion of Poland.

Solidarity, led by shipyard electrician and later Nobel Peace Laureate Lech Walesa, played a leading role in overthrowing communism in Poland eight years later.

Jaruzelski has often argued that the imposition of martial law spared Poland the bloody Soviet intervention suffered by Hungary in 1956 and the then-Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The National Remembrance Institute (IPN), which holds communist-era files, says the government which ruled Poland for nearly two years under martial law was a "criminal group".

"They are also accused of committing crimes by ordering people's imprisonment," the IPN's prosecutor told the court while reading out the lengthy, complex indictment. Poles today remain deeply divided over the legacy of martial law and of Jaruzelski himself, who in 1981 was prime minister, defence minister and head of Poland's Communist Party.

Jaruzelski also faces separate charges over his role as defence minister in 1970 in the shooting of striking workers in several northern Polish cities.

It is not clear how long the much-delayed martial law trial will run and many procedural delays are expected, not least because of the age and health problems of the defendants.

Jaruzelski told Reuters in May he doubted the trial would ever come to a final verdict "due to biological conditions".