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In May 2012 on the HFHR’s premises the meeting was hosted with Liubov Kovalyova, mother of Vladislav Kovalyov, a man sentenced to death for his alleged complicity in carrying out a bomb attack at a Minsk metro station on 11 April 2011. The sister of the executed Belarusian also took part in the meeting. Valdislav Kovalyov’s mother and sister still don’t know when the execution was carried out and where their son and brother was buried. Under the Belarusian law such information is not to be revealed.

The Foundation appealed to the Mayor of Śródmieście District in respect of the recent decision of the Board of Śródmieście District, Warsaw made during the latest edition of the “Premises for Culture” initiative. Fourteen applications were submitted in response to the lease offer for the premises situated at Grzybowski Square in Warsaw. Only four organisations satisfied formal requirements: Good Karma Association, Shalom Foundation, Stanisław Brzozowski Association and Adam Smith Center.

The Ukrainian Parliament is working on drafts of two controversial legislative acts. HFHR experts alarm that the new legislation may significantly limit the rights and liberties of individuals under the pretext of protecting the public morals. In particular, it will affect the freedom of expression and the prohibition of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

In response to its motion for access to public information, the Foundation received an internal document of the Ministry of Finance setting out the principles of tax control over excessive income obtained from disclosed sources or income generated from undisclosed sources.

The Circuit Court in Warsaw decided the case brought by the journalist Bogdan Wróblewski against the head of the Central Anticorruption Bureau (CBA). The Court ruled in favour of the journalist and found that the CBA had infringed Mr Wróblewski’s right to privacy, secrecy of communication and the reporter’s privilege by acquiring and consulting his phone records.

A journalist and the editor-in-chief of a local newspaper were proclaimed guilty of disclosing information on closed-door court proceedings. The guilty verdict was rendered despite the fact that it was the court itself who had allowed the journalists to access the records of the proceedings to write a newspaper article.

The procedure employed to amend the Public Information Act fell short of the constitutional requirements for the legislative process, held the Constitutional Tribunal last week, deciding the motion brought by Poland’s President.

The Circuit Court in Cracow found Prof. Legutko, a former conservative education minister, currently a member of the European Parliament, in breach of the personal interests of two Wrocław secondary school students. Mr Legutko had called them, among other things, “snots spoilt by their parents” and named their actions “a typical, infantile tantrum”.

According to the statement of the Appellate Prosecutor’s Office in Cracow received by the HFHR, in the course of the investigation involving the offence under article 231(1) of the Criminal Code (abuse of power) the prosecutors interviewed 62 persons and collected 20 volumes of evidence.