Krakow Gunman Dies as Poland Braces for a Week of Flashpoints

The suspect in Poland's deadliest shooting in decades died in hospital, police announced Monday. The gunman opened fire at random in Krakow's historic market square on Saturday, killing six people — two of them foreigners — and wounding about 15 others. It was the worst fatal shooting in the country since communism ended in 1989.

Investigators believe the gunman killed nine people in total. The bodies of his parents and sister were found at the family home, a two-hour drive from Krakow. Prosecutors opened a probe into an "act of terrorism" on Sunday, and the interior minister said the suspect was fascinated by "far-right ideologies" — a claim that drew fury from the conservative and nationalist opposition.

The bloodshed lands as a politically fractured Poland heads into a critical stretch. On Tuesday, the Constitutional Tribunal holds a high-stakes meeting at the centre of the standoff between Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government and its opponents over judicial appointments. The right-wing opposition accuses the liberal, pro-European administration of undermining the constitutional order, while the governing coalition says it is undoing "political" nominations and nationalist-era reforms it argues fall short of European democratic standards.

That court crisis blew up late last month, when riot police blocked access for nationalist protesters who had camped outside the building for weeks to "defend" it. A judge newly appointed by the parliamentary majority declared she was taking over in the interim, effectively suspending the incumbent, who is close to the right and to nationalist President Karol Nawrocki. The nationalist Law and Justice party, in power from 2015 to 2023, cancelled its planned protests for Monday and Tuesday after the Krakow attack but may restart them later in the week.

Wednesday's Independence March is fuelling the deepest worry. The annual event pulls in up to hundreds of thousands of right-wing supporters, from Catholic conservatives to white-supremacist fringe groups and antisemitic, pro-Russian far-right elements, and Nawrocki has said he will attend. Some observers call it "high-risk", fearing the crowd could stray from its agreed route toward the Constitutional Tribunal. Tusk dismissed talk of a ban on X: "No one intends to ban the Independence March," he wrote, calling the speculation disinformation, while urging marchers to "refrain from aggression" and warning against counter-demonstrations.

Commentators are already bracing for the political fallout. "Tragedies like the one in Krakow only serve to sharpen political divisions," Warsaw University political scientist Ewa Marciniak said, predicting a search for blame after the mourning. Writer Boguslaw Chrabota, in the weekly Rzeczpospolita, described an "extremely destructive polarisation" that divides society emotionally as well as institutionally, and warned that radicalised rhetoric "gives rise to Polish Breiviks", invoking Anders Breivik, who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011. With parliamentary elections set for autumn 2027, Marciniak expects both the shooting and the court crisis to be used to deepen conflict.