Warsaw prosecutors charge 30-year-old repeat offender in bus knife attack

A 30-year-old man faces three criminal charges after stabbing two Ukrainian passengers on a Warsaw bus in mid-October. Prosecutors allege the attack was motivated by the victims' ethnicity.

Polish police in the Żoliborz district announced the arrest following a search that led them to a wooded area in the Bielany district. Officers detained the suspect there last weekend. He had been hiding in the area after fleeing the scene of the bus attack.

Investigators determined that the man inflicted multiple stab and slash wounds on the two victims. Both men were transported to a hospital for treatment. The prosecutor's office filed charges for two specific offenses related to the ethnically motivated assault.

The suspect is a repeat offender. He served a sentence of at least six months for a similar intentional crime, which the Warsaw-Żoliborz District Court imposed intermittently between April 2021 and February 2023. This current offense falls within five years of his previous conviction.

The court granted the prosecutor's request for pre-trial detention. The 30-year-old man is now held in a police cell for three months. If convicted, he could face a prison sentence ranging from three to 20 years.

The case follows a series of recent incidents involving Ukrainians in Poland. In August, three Polish men went on trial for beating a Ukrainian citizen in Radom. In Kraków, a 39-year-old man verbally abused a Ukrainian couple. In Gdańsk, a man attacked a Ukrainian passerby and two Polish residents, using a term derived from Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera.