Poles move to arrest don's wife
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Your support makes all the difference.THE MILITARY Court in Warsaw ruled in favour of issuing an arrest warrant for the wife of an Oxford don yesterday over her alleged role as a military prosecutor in Stalinist-era Poland.
The decision is the latest move in a campaign by the Polish military authorities to extradite Helena Brus. Mrs Brus, 79, is the wife of Wlodzimierz Brus, emeritus professor of modern Russian and East European studies and a fellow of Wolfson College.
Mrs Brus, formerly known as Helena Wolinska, is accused of illegally ordering the arrest in 1951 of General Emil Fieldorf, a high-ranking commander of the Polish national resistance, the Home Army (AK) and one of Poland's leading war heroes.
During the 1950s Poland, with its eastern European neighbours, was ruled by hardline Stalinists who took orders from Moscow.
Communist officials hunted down, tried and executed many members of the AK, despite its record of fighting the Nazis, as they feared that members of the wartime AK might form the nucleus of an anti-Soviet underground movement.
The Polish military prosecutor will now formally tell Mrs Brus of the decision. She will then have seven days to appeal, a spokesman for the Polish Justice Ministry said. Any appeal will then go to a higher military court. Polish sources said it was likely any appeal would be rejected.
The way would then be open for the Polish Justice Ministry formally to request her extradition from Britain. That gives rise to the spectre of a controversy similar to that surrounding General Augusto Pinochet - a pensioner being extradited for alleged crimes committed decades ago.
Mrs Brus left Poland after an anti-semitic campaign in 1968. She has denied that she charged General Fieldorf. She said that she was not involved in his arrest and had been involved in Poland's anti-Nazi resistance. She said she could not expect a fair trial in Poland.
General Fieldorf was accused of attempting to overthrow the Polish state. He was hanged in 1953, but posthumously rehabilitated in 1989, after the downfall of the Communist regime.
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