The assassin of Pawel Adamowicz, mayor of the Polish city of Gdansk, stabbed during a public ceremony in 2019 was sentenced to life in prison by a local court on Thursday.
"
I recognize the accused as guilty of the incriminated facts (...) I impose a life prison sentence on him
", with the possibility of leaving the penitentiary establishment "
in 40 years, at the earliest
", declared the judge , during the closing session of the trial, broadcast live by the television channel TVN24.
The culprit "
Stefan Wilmont committed an unprecedented murder in the history of Poland after the (Second)
world war", perpetrated with a 27 centimeter long military knife "
in front of thousands of television viewers and spectators gathered for a charity event
” of national scope, on January 13, 2019, underlined judge Aleksandra Kaczmarek.
According to the court, the 30-year-old culprit suffers
from "profound personality disorders
“but without symptoms of mental illness, concluded the court three independent psychiatric expertise in support.
During the judgment, he often laughed and smiled.
He never expressed regret for his actions or asked for forgiveness.
His lawyer suggested to reporters that he did not rule out appealing.
“Public Television Media Product”
The murder of Pawel Adamowicz at the time caused a wave of excitement across Poland and his funeral brought together tens of thousands of people in Gdansk.
Very popular, Pawel Adamowicz, 53, ruled this former Hanseatic city for 20 years.
In the municipal elections in the fall of 2018, he obtained around 65% of the vote.
The murderer "
is a media product of public television
" controlled by the power, told AFP Piotr Adamowicz, the brother of the assassinated mayor.
Ongoing fierce hostility between the ruling populist nationalist party and the centrist opposition, led by the Civic Platform (PO), has in recent years turned public debate in Poland into an exchange of mutual accusations, invectives, threats, finding its extension, even broader and cruder, on the internet.
The state's passivity, even permissiveness in the face of hate speech, sometimes even inspired by the authorities, is widely denounced by the independent media.