An individual who had scaled the monument to the victims of the Smolensk air disaster, in the center of Warsaw, and threatened to blow himself up, has been arrested, as confirmed by the police in the Polish capital.
After approximately two and a half hours, a police negotiator managed to convince the individual, whose motives are still unknown, to get off the monument in Pilsudski Square.
The bomb squads are examining the backpack and an unidentified object that the man was carrying to determine if he really had an explosive device.
Images of an individual dressed in black and with part of his face covered with a balaclava, standing on top of the ladder-shaped monument and with a backpack between his legs, had been spread on social networks.
As part of the police operation, Pilsudski Square and adjacent streets were cordoned off and citizens were asked to avoid the area.
Poland will hold general elections tomorrow, Sunday, in which 30 million Poles are called to decide whether to revalidate the Government led by the ultra-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) for a third consecutive term.
In the Smolensk air disaster, a plane carrying the Polish president, Lech Kaczynski – twin brother of the current deputy prime minister and president of the PiS, Jaroslaw Kaczynski – among other senior officials, crashed near that Russian city in 2010.
