WARSAW, March 8 -- A Polish court Friday sentenced 12 elderly men, former functionaries of the communist-era state security police, to prison terms of up to nine years for torturing political prisoners during the Stalinist era. Adam Humer, former director of the investigation department of the Ministry of Public Security, was sentenced to nine years on a total of nine charges, one of them that he caused the death of national leader Tadeusz Labedzki in 1946. 'This is the first such trial since the end of World War II,' said Warsaw provincial court judge Tomasz Grochowicz in announcing the convictions and sentences. 'What happened to Polish families is an unhealed wound. During the trial, there was unmasked an unprecedented method of terror and lawlessness.' Grocowicz said altogether, 86 charges were proven against the 12 defendants, all in the 70s. Humer, 79, displayed an arrogance during the trial in front of his accusers, and defended his actions. 'During the sharp struggle against the terror of the underground, violations took place,' he said during his closing statement Tuesday, referring to the independent Polish underground army (AK). 'I was told I stained the uniform of the Polish officer, but I know AK criminals who should have been in the (defendants') box with me.' The other defendants, their sentences, and some actions they were found guilty of, were: Markus Kac, 78, who specialized in breaking prisoners' teeth, six years; Tadeusz Szymanski, 72, who tortured farmers who refused to join state farms, four years; Wieslaw Prutkowski, 72, who broke prisoners' teeth and forced them to run up and down stairs, six years; Tadeusz Tomporski, 71, who pulled out prisoners' hair, seven years; Edmund Kwasek, 73, six years; Roman Laszkiewicz, 72, who used an iron to burn prisoners' skin, eight years; Eugeniusz Chimczak, 75, who tortured women by plucking out their hair, eight years; Mieczyslaw Kobylec, 71, who specialized in torturing women, four years; Jan Fugacewicz, 70, who dunked prisoners heads in the toilet, three years, and Leon Midro, 71, who tortured priests, four years.
Defendant Jan Dabrowski, 74, nicknamed 'Brutal Jan' by prisoners, received a two-year suspended sentence. Kwasek was the only one who expressed remorse during the trial. 'If somebody after the war had explained to me what Katyn was, I would have never joined the security apparatus,' he said, referring to the site where thousands of Polish officers were slain by the Soviet secret police. Several dozen of the defendants' former victims testified at their trial and sat in on the case, hurling insults at the accused during breaks in the process. One witness, Jozefa Zycinski, said she was four months' pregnant when she was arrested, and was tortured by Humer and Kwasek. 'I gave birth to a daughter in 1948 in the Kielce prison,' she said. 'The baby was blue when it was born.'
