Poland Seeks Answers on Ziobro’s Hungary-to-US Trip Amid Trial Row

Poland’s foreign ministry said it would seek answers on how former justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro traveled from Hungary to the United States, despite Warsaw’s push to bring him to trial on abuse-of-power charges. The case has become both a legal dispute and a diplomatic test, with Polish officials saying they want to know what document or legal basis allowed Ziobro to leave Hungarian territory and enter the United States.

Ziobro, one of the most powerful figures in the previous Law and Justice government, is suspected of 26 offenses, most of them tied to the alleged misuse of money from a fund meant to help crime victims. A Warsaw court ordered his temporary pre-trial detention on Feb. 5, 2026, after prosecutors said there was a high likelihood he had committed the alleged offenses. Poland has also said Ziobro’s travel documents, including his diplomatic passport, were invalidated.

Waldemar Żurek, Poland’s justice minister, said Warsaw would ask both Washington and Budapest about the legal and factual basis for Ziobro’s trip. Poland’s national prosecutor’s office said on May 11 that it was investigating Ziobro’s whereabouts and whether other people helped him flee and evade criminal liability. Officials in Warsaw have already asked Budapest to confirm whether Ziobro and Marcin Romanowski were granted asylum and whether that protection can be revoked.

Hungary granted Ziobro asylum in January 2026, deepening an already bitter split between Warsaw and Budapest. Poland had withdrawn its ambassador to Hungary in July 2025 after Budapest granted asylum to Romanowski, Ziobro’s former deputy justice minister. The latest episode has revived questions about how far political protection can stretch inside Europe when one government treats a fugitive ally as a persecuted dissident and another sees a defendant trying to outrun the courts.

Reports said Ziobro arrived in the United States on Saturday, May 10, and was photographed at Newark Airport. Ziobro said he would work in the United States as a political commentator. U.S. and Hungarian officials had not immediately responded to requests for comment, leaving Warsaw to press its case while the former minister’s path from Budapest to New Jersey exposes the limits of extradition, asylum and EU solidarity.