Charges that two former police generals ordered the murder of a Solidarity priest are the first major prosecution of Poland's old guard and officially reopen a case most Poles never considered closed. The arrests in the case of the Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko come six years after the crime that shocked the nation, and at the outset of a presidential race in which Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki's careful treatment of former Communists is being challenged by Lech Walesa. On Monday, authorities also disclosed that a former interior minister and six other officials have been accused of taking bribes of gold and jewelry dating to 1971. ``In cases of clear crimes, party people will be punished. If proven, these people will be condemned,'' Aleksander Smolar, a senior adviser to Mazowiecki, told an American Society of Newspaper Editors delegation Tuesday. At a Walesa campaign rally in Warsaw on Tuesday, a spectator challenged the timing of the arrests ``right now before the elections,'' scheduled for Nov. 25. But Smolar said there was absolutely ``no political calculation'' in the arrests, which he said were ordered by independent courts. He said there would be no departure from the government's basic policy ``that our evolution to democracy should be as peaceful as possible, trying to reconcile the two parts of Poland,'' rather than waging a ``cold civil war'' against former Communists. Smolar said he recognized that the prosecutions of former police officials would prove popular because of ``the feeling of bitterness and injustice'' after 45 years of communism. ``There is a need of a clear moral condemnation, everybody needs it for a sort of catharsis,'' Smolar said. However, he added, most Poles understand the wisdom of avoiding purges. Those Interior Ministry records that survived destruction - the Mazowiecki government did not take steps to prevent the burning of documents - will not be opened to show who cooperated with the secret police, Smolar said. ``It is extremely dangerous and destroys the nation to judge people for their weaknesses ... in very harsh times, when only heroes were able to survive with dignity,'' he said. The 1984 kidnapping and murder of the 37-year-old Popieluszko, whose body was pulled from a river, gave a martyr to the then-underground Solidarity movement the Communists were trying to crush. Many Polish households still display photographs of the priest that were put up during the 1980s as a sign of protest. Four secret policemen from the Interior Ministry's Fourth Department, the unit responsible for spying on the Roman Catholic Church and clergy, were tried and convicted in Popieluszko's death. Two have been paroled. But no involvement was found on the part of higher authorities - a conclusion that satisfied few and came to symbolize ruthless communism. ``Something unprecedented has happened,'' Jerzy Jachowicz, an expert on the security services, wrote of the arrests Tuesday in a front-page Gazeta Wyborcza commentary. The two generals, former Deputy Interior Minister Wladyslaw Ciaston and Zenon Platek, former head of the Fourth Department, were charged with plotting the priest's slaying during September and October 1984 and directing the Oct. 19, 1984 killing, officials said. Prosecutors said the corruption charges were unrelated to the killing. But among those arrested was onetime Interior Minister Miroslaw Milewski, a former Communist Party Politburo member who was Central Committee secretary in charge of internal affairs when Popieluszko was murdered. After the slaying, Milewski was quietly dismissed. Milewski was given the party posts after being replaced as interior minister by Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak in 1981, during Solidarity's first legal period. Kiszczak, a Communist holdover in the Solidarity government until he resigned last summer, told Polish television in September that he believed the priest's killers could not have acted ``without the inspiration of someone standing higher then them.'' He suggested the crime was committed by those aiming to destabilize the ``reform-oriented'' Communist government of then-party leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, now the outgoing president. On Polish television Tuesday, Kiszczak said he believes Ciaston and Platek, who worked for him, are innocent. He said the corruption charges against Milewski were investigated in May 1984 and a ``thorough report'' was given to superiors, but he did not elaborate. The Popieluszko case was reopened July 24, three weeks after Kiszczak's resignation, by the Office for the Protection of the State, the smaller and tightly controlled agency that replaced the disbanded secret police. The arrests made since Thursday open a ``new chapter in the case,'' the government daily Rzeczpospolita said. ``The direct perpetrators of a crime were already judged. ... However, unanswered questions still remain,'' the newspaper said. The corruption inquiry, which also targets two unidentified other generals and two colonels, involves acceptance of bribes of ``great value, including many kilograms of gold and jewelry,'' Prosecutor General Aleksander Herzog said. The alleged crimes span the period from 1971, when Milewski was a deputy interior minister, to 1981, Herzog said.
