Poland arrested a man on Sunday accused of plotting to assassinate Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the country’s defense minister, the prime minister wrote on X.
“The man who threatened to attack has been arrested,” Tusk wrote on X, praising police for their “swift and decisive action.”
The Interior Minister also confirmed the arrest. No details about the man’s identity have been made public.
Security chiefs hold urgent talks
Tusk’s tweet followed an emergency meeting of Polish security services to discuss what officials saw as a potential attack on Prime Minister and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz.
The meeting was called shortly after the police received information about a possible assassination attempt, an Interior Ministry spokesperson wrote in a message on X.
Although the nature of the apparent threat is not immediately clear, Poland remains on high alert following a wave of violent attacks on schools across the country this week.
Poland, which borders Ukraine, has also faced growing security threats in recent months due to hybrid attacks from Russia.
What do we know about attacks on schools in Poland?
Poland is reeling from three stabbing attacks on schools in just four days this week, which left at least one dead and many injured, including children.
The first incident occurred on Wednesday, when a 19-year-old student at a vocational school in the central province of Mazovia injured nine people by attacking fellow students and teachers with a sharp object.
A day later, a 15-year-old killed a school guard and injured two others at his former school in Leszczydol-Nowiny, also in the same province. Tusk said the suspect wore a camera mounted on his helmet to film the attack.
On Saturday, a 21-year-old woman attacked an adult education school in Warsaw, injuring three other women.
Polish police arrested 117 people across the country for carrying knives or dangerous weapons, as well as threatening to attack schools or students. Police checked 64,000 schools, most of them in the central Mazovia province.
Police said Friday that cybercrime investigators had found no evidence that a social media challenge was fueling the wave of youth violence, or that the attacks were coordinated.
What did Tusk say about the attacks on the school?
On Sunday morning, Donald Tusk said the attacks were “spontaneous actions” fueled by a “growing glorification of violence” online.
“We are not dealing with any large-scale organized groups,” Tusk said at the government crisis meeting.
“Over the past years and months, we have noted – globally and in Poland – a rise in fascination with violence,” Tusk continued.
The prime minister blamed the wave of attacks on “nihilistic violence”, rather than a specific political ideology. However, he acknowledged that “some of those arrested are active in the extreme right.”
Tusk added that authorities have observed an increase in online searches for Nazi or far-right content and “mass killers who have become online idols.”
The Prime Minister highlighted a “civilizational phenomenon” according to which children are more exposed to online violence through video games or detective stories.
Tusk added that police checks would continue in schools across the country next week to ensure children who have been exposed to these stories of knife attacks do not have “stupid and dangerous thoughts” of carrying out copycat attacks.
Edited by: Wesley Rahn
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