Poland's liberal mayor of Gdansk dies after stabbing

Pawel Adamowicz, the liberal mayor of the Polish city of Gdansk, died on Monday of his wounds a day after being stabbed by a former convict who rushed the stage during one of Poland’s biggest annual charity events.

We couldn’t win,” Poland’s health minister Lukasz Szumowski told reporters via private broadcaster TVN. Doctors had operated on Adamowicz for five hours, state news agency PAP said.

Polish officials said the day of Adamowicz’s funeral would be a national day of mourning.

Television footage showed thousands of people gathering for commemorative vigils across the country on Monday, including in the cities of Gdansk, Poznan and the capital Warsaw.

Adamowicz was attacked while attending the annual Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity, which raises money for medical equipment in hospitals. The head of the charity resigned soon after Adamowicz’s death was announced.

Television footage of the attack showed a man screaming “Adamowicz is dead!” as he rushed the stage and stabbed the mayor, who crumpled to the floor.

Speaking on the stage before he was arrested, the attacker accused the mayor’s former party of putting him in prison, where he said he was tortured.

The attacker has been identified by Polish authorities as a 27-year-old named Stefan, who was released last month from prison where he had been serving 5-1/2 years for a 2014 conviction for attempted bank robbery. His full name has so far been withheld.

Psychiatrists will assess if the attacker can be held criminally responsible for his actions, prosecutor Krzysztof Sierak told a news conference.

“This is a person who has a personality disorder, but he isn’t mentally ill. If he was mentally ill, he would have been diagnosed earlier as he was already convicted of four crimes,” said Wojciech Sledzinski, a psychiatrist and director of the Mental Health and Addiction Center in Krakow told Agency.

(Agency)