Unprecedented court order to remove Lyudmyla Kozlovska’s Polish entry ban

25 January 2024 | Author: Bartosz Kramek

In an unprecedented manner, the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Warsaw ordered the Head of the Office for Foreigners to remove Lyudmyla Kozlovska’s entry ban as unjustified. There is no record of Polish courts ever ordering the Head to remove an entry ban. The verdict dated 28 November 2023 was delivered to us on 18 December 2023.

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UPDATED: The verdict has come into force on 5 February 2024 as no cassation was filed by the Head of the Office for Foreigners.

The Court ruled that the ban violated the law to such an extent that it ultimately had to revoke it, noting that the case has already been undergoing judicial review several times (including the Supreme Administrative Court) and fully supported the previous judgements and adopted them as its own. All the previous judgments were favourable to Lyudmyla but simply referred the case, as lacking sufficient basis, for re-examination by state authorities. However, in November 2023, the Court not only revoked their decisions, but directly ordered to remove the politically motivated ban.

Following the previous verdicts, the judgement pointed out that, based on the information contained in the document classified as “secret” and the remaining evidence there was no basis for entry in the list and, previously, in the Schengen Information System (SIS) and that the information contained in that document was very unspecific and did not allow to conclude that the entry ban was required for reasons of state security.

For us, it signifies another vital victory against the former, authoritarian-leaning Polish authorities.

Earlier, on 13 June 2019 Lyudmyla’s data had been removed from the SIS in connection with the granting of residence in Belgium, and the case continued solely with respect to the national ban. In 2018, on the basis of a classified “opinion” of the Internal Security Agency (ABW), the Law and Justice (PiS) government imposed an entry ban on ODF’s President Lyudmyla Kozlovska, groundlessly deeming her a “threat to national security” and therefore abusing the SIS.

The classified evidence gathered by the Internal Security Agency (ABW), although updated several times over the years, has not referred to any new circumstances to Lyudmyla’s disadvantage. On the contrary, non-classified evidence offered by Lyudmyla’s attorney was ignored as the Head of the Office for Foreigners based its decision solely on the “findings” of the politicised ABW.

⚖️Another major loss by the fmr Law and Justice regime: in an unprecedented verdict, Voivodeship Administrative Court ordered the 🇵🇱 entry ban of ODF President @LyudaKozlovska to be immediately removed!

The ban was imposed (together with an unsuccessful Schengen ban) in 2018 by… pic.twitter.com/PgEovn9MRO
— Open Dialogue Foundation / Fundacja Otwarty Dialog (@ODFoundation) January 5, 2024

The Court noted that at no stage of her stay on the territory of Poland or in the Schengen area did Lyudmyla engage in any activities that could pose a threat to the security of Poland or any other state of the EU.

The judgement is not final. The Head of the Office for Foreigners, who has not yet been replaced following the change of government after the October 2023 parliamentary elections, has the right to file an appeal.

In October 2022, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe adopted a resolution calling on Member States to stop the abuse of SIS by the unjustified inclusion of people for, among others, political reasons. It was triggered by Lyudmyla’s case, which had sparked a diplomatic crisis between Poland and several Western European states (incl. Germany, Belgium, the UK, France and Switzerland). The countries disregarded the SIS ban as a politically motivated revenge against a critical, inconvenient activist and her organisation.

Back in 2017, ODF’s the Chair of Supervisory Board and Lyudmyla’s husband Bartosz Kramek had published a Facebook post calling for civil disobedience against PiS in reaction to its assault on the independence of the judiciary in Poland. That, along with false information provided by the governments and security services of Russia, Kazakhstan and then-Moldova, were used to justify the ban.

So far, the Open Dialogue Foundation and its leaders won multiple court disputes (incl. defamation cases) against the Law and Justice government, its officials and propaganda apparatus, including the Foreign Ministry, party vice president and MEP Joachim Brudziński, the very same special services chief Maciej Wąsik, Polish state broadcaster TVP, MEP Dominik Tarczyński and PiS media mogul Tomasz Sakiewicz. They were all accusing us i.a. of anti-state activity, money laundering and even cooperation with the Kremlin and its agencies.

Recently, yet another libel case, against a hateful blogger, Balli Marzec, was concluded in favour of our Foundation.

The inclusion of Lyudmyla in SIS and the subsequent ban on Lyudmyla entering Poland had actually been imposed at the personal request of Mariusz Kamiński and Maciej Wąsik; in 2015, Kamiński became Minister-Coordinator of the Special Services and later Minister of Interior while Wąsik was his deputy in the PiS government.

They were known to lead the campaign against us, controlling the ABW and the Head of the Office for Foreigners and commissioning illegal surveillance against Bartosz Kramek. At the end of December 2023, Kamiński and Wąsik were sentenced to two years in prison for abuse of power with a fabricated and malicious investigation into corruption back in 2009.

Attorney Joanna Koch comments on the case as follows: “The Court highlighted, that since the previous judgments, the circumstances of the case have not changed, and certainly not to the detriment of the complainant. On the contrary, it has been rightly pointed out in the complaint that in its decision the authority failed to refer to the fact that authorities in Moldova had discontinued the investigation against Lyudmyla and that Muhtar Ablyazov had been granted the status of a refugee. These are the circumstances that were the grounds for the entry in the list. (…). The judgment is not final. The Head of the Office for Foreigners has the right to file an appeal in cassation against the judgment within 30 days of its receipt“.

Lyudmyla Kozlovska and Bartosz Kramek themselves also commented on the case.

6 years of endless fighting for human rights with @pisorgpl_EN & its joint propaganda with #Kazakhstani and @VladPlahotniuc’s regimes …

I hope that in the new political situation in #Poland, the administrative authorities will comply with the court’s verdict and end the… https://t.co/i3exFEtxZJ
— Lyudmyla Kozlovska 🇪🇺🇺🇦 (@LyudaKozlovska) January 5, 2024

“In 2018, after many years of my stay, I was banned from entering Poland upon a private request of Kamiński and Wąsik who controlled the Polish special services. I do hope that in the new political environment, administrative bodies will respect the judgment of the court and that malicious, politically motivated persecution of activists will be discontinued. I trust that Minister Kierwiński will soon replace those in charge of the Office for Foreigners as it was yet another institution strictly subordinated to serve the interests of the former ruling party,” said the ODF President, adding that the new government and the parliament should take up the task of rehabilitating the people persecuted and harassed by the former authorities, who continue to face criminal charges instigated by the most subservient and discredited prosecutors, such as Jerzy Ziarkiewicz. “Not only was my husband wronged by them; the same happened to Marta Lempart and other activists of the Women’s Strike, Paweł Wojtunik and several other former heads of the secret services, and non-cooperating managers and entrepreneurs such as Jakub Karnowski, Przemysław Krych, Piotr Osiecki, Maciej Witucki, and local government activists, politicians of the Civic Coalition and many others,” Lyudmyla Kozlovska stated.

In turn, Bartosz Kramek states, “From our perspective, this judgment sets a precedent. For the first time ever, the court has not only overturned the decisions of the Voivode of the Mazowieckie province and the Head of the Office for Foreigners, but actually ruled that the ban on my wife’s entry into Poland is to be cancelled. This is a bittersweet victory, as justice was served after 6 years of struggle. So far, administrative courts have ruled five times that the classified evidence collected by the Internal Security Agency (ABW) is, to put it mildly, of very little value. Of course, the fact that we sued Wąsik for violating our personal rights because he publicly accused us of connections with Russia and money laundering, spices up the whole matter. Last year, Wąsik lost in the court of first instance. Thanks to the hotel affair [illegal surveillance of Bartosz Kramek ordered by Maciej Wąsik – edit.], we know that he persistently tried to obtain and even to create compromising evidence, the so-called kompromat, against us. The criminal case against me and the expulsion of Lyudmyla, in which he engaged the Internal Security Agency, was his private revenge also aimed at authenticating the slanderous charges against us,” he said.

Bartosz Kramek estimates that from the very beginning, this was a conflict of interest and a personal animosity. Decisions were made by the government administration which was fully subordinate not only to the state and the law, but also to the then-ruling party, and it was done based on fabricated documents (which remain secret to this day) of the fully subservient politically Internal Security Agency (ABW). “We sued Wąsik and he lost the case, however, before that happened he had abused power by trying to fabricate incriminating materials against us which were to be made credible by dodgy phrases about state security, the appearance of legalism and the alleged seriousness of the institutions and measures involved. The problem is that the façade of legalism does not change the nature of the practice aimed at destroying us and our activities in terms of the legal, financial and, above all, reputational perspective. And all this happened because I called for civil disobedience in defence of courts of law, and because the Open Dialogue Foundation has unswervingly condemned violations of the rule of law in Poland, also on the European forum,” he stated.

The Chair of the Supervisory Board of the Open Dialogue Foundation has no doubts: “The courts have finally thwarted the actions undertaken against my wife by the Internal Security Agency (ABW) and the Head of the Office for Foreigners. Kamiński and Wąsik are no longer members of the government and key decisions are now being made by the new government, in particular by Minister Kierwiński. We hope that soon Lyudmyla will be able to lawfully and safely come to Poland. The Law and Justice (PiS) party had no scruples to turn state institutions into their private playground and to abuse their power in a vindictive and repressive way not only to fight political opponents, but also to quash activists defending the rule of law or refugees at the state border. Unfortunately, many of these cases still continue as they did, which I hope happens only because of inertia” .

We convey our gratitude to the excellent attorney Joanna Koch and all those supporting us in this struggle, against the backdrop of the Polish rule of law crisis, over the years.

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