A suspect has been arrested after the fatal shooting of an exiled Russian artist in Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Thursday.
The man, who holds a Georgian passport, may have been involved in the crime, Tusk said in Warsaw, according to the PAP news agency. He said the arrest was the work of police in the Lublin district and Poland's domestic intelligence agency ABW.
The arrest took place near Warsaw, Lublin police said in an official statement. It said, "the detainee used a passport issued to a 36-year-old citizen of Georgia."
Radio station RMF reported that anti-terror forces were deployed during the arrest at a workers' hostel in Piastów, some 18 kilometres south-west of the Polish capital. There are indications that the detainee's passport is forged, and the man could be Chechen, according to the report.
The Russian performance artist and caricaturist known by the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky was shot dead with five bullets on the street on Monday in the small eastern Polish town of Biała Podlaska. Both the Polish police and the domestic intelligence service had offered Skrepetsky protection, but he had declined it for unknown reasons, Tusk had said on Wednesday.
The Polish leader has said he believes the fatal shooting was a political murder even though evidence and more concrete leads are needed, PAP reported.
Two men from Belarus were temporarily detained over the crime. They were released because there was no evidence they had been directly involved in the attack, Tusk had said.
