Former Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski, who was arrested yesterday and remanded in custody for abuse of power, begins hunger strikeas he said today in his statement.

“I announce that I am facing my conviction…as one act of political revenge“, Kaminski said in a statement that was read by former spokesman Blazec Pomposi at a press conference in front of the prime minister’s office.

“As a political prisoner I started a hunger strike from the first day of my imprisonment,” he said.

The Polish police arrested him yesterday at the presidential palace former Secretary of the Interior and his associate Macey Voisik, executing a court order to send them to prison, thus escalating the confrontation between President Andrei Duda and the new government under Donald Tusk.

Right-wing president Duda, an ally of PiS, had invited the two men to the presidential palace yesterday.

Prime Minister Tusk had earlier accused President Duda of obstructing justice after the two Law and Justice (PiS) MPs appeared at the presidential palace.

After coming to power in October Tusk, a former EU official, pledged to reverse policies of his predecessors, the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, who faced accusations of subverting the democratic regime during their eight-year rule.

In December, Polish justice sentenced Mariusz Kaminski and Maciej Wojcik to two years in prison for exceeding their powers in a case dating back to 2007. Then the head of the anti-corruption office, Kaminski had ordered an investigation that was deemed illegal against a member of the ruling coalition. He had also been the coordinator of the secret services while, in the eyes of his critics, he embodied the authoritarian tendencies within the nationalist PiS party.

The two convicts refused to recognize the court decision.

On Monday afternoon, a court issued an arrest warrant against the two politicians. They claim their innocence, citing President Duda’s 2015 pardon, which was challenged by the Supreme Court.

Yesterday afternoon, Kaminski and Wojcik appeared in the forecourt of the presidential palace for a brief statement to the press. “We are not hiding, we are here with the president. We know that police forces have come to arrest us,” Kaminski told reporters, adding: “If we end up in jail, we will be political prisoners.”

The new Minister of the Interior, Marcin Kierwiński, commented that “all are equal before the law».

Hundreds of supporters of the PiS party gathered outside the presidential palace yesterday to protest, chanting “Shame” and “Freedom for political prisoners”. A spokesman for PiS called the arrests “kidnappings” and a “violation of democratic rules”.

The nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), which has ruled Poland since 2015, failed to secure a parliamentary majority in October’s elections, and an alliance of pro-European parties led by former European Council president Donald Tusk took power, aiming to end the perennial confrontation between Warsaw and Brussels.

The two former officials are not political prisoners and every prisoner has the right to refuse to be fed and hydrated if he so chooses, was the reaction of the Deputy Minister of Justice Maria Eihart today.

A group of PiS MPs, including party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, rallied overnight outside its prison in Warsaw’s Grozów district, with Kaczynski calling the two inmates “political prisoners” and demanding, in vain, to be allowed to enter the prison.