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Posthumous promotion for Polish Cold War agent

PR dla Zagranicy
Paweł Kononczuk 24.10.2016 16:38
Polish President Andrzej Duda has posthumously awarded Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, who passed secret Warsaw Pact documents to the CIA during the Cold War, the rank of brigadier general.
Ryszard Kukliński. Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka Ryszard Kukliński. Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka

The move came after a request earlier this year by Defence Minister Antoni Macierewicz.

Kukliński passed top-secret Warsaw Pact documents to the CIA between 1971 and 1981, including plans for a military onslaught on the West and for the imposition of martial law in Poland to crush the Solidarity movement.

Shortly after the declaration of martial law in December 1981, Kukliński was extracted from Poland by the CIA, along with his family.

In 1984, a military court in Warsaw sentenced him to death in absentia. The sentence was annulled after the fall of communism in Poland in 1989.

Kukliński died in 2004 at the age of 73 in the US state of Florida.

(pk)

Source: PAP

tags: Cold War
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