The suicide of Barbara Blida, a former construction minister and a long-time activist of the postcommunist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), has shocked the public and provoked searching questions about the methods used by the country's security services in dealing with politicians suspected of criminal offenses.

The former minister shot herself April 25 as Internal Security Agency (ABW) officers were searching her house. Alongside a few other individuals, Blida was to be detained as a result of an ABW investigation concerning swindles in the coal industry in the 1990s.

The investigation, which is being supervised by the District Prosecutor's Office in Katowice, is a part of what has been termed the "coal mafia" affair. Blida was suspected of accepting and soliciting bribes. The probe started in March 2006 and Blida was to be presented with charges, alongside 13 other individuals.

On the day she died, four ABW officers entered Blida's house in Siemianowice Śląskie at 6:05 a.m. Blida was in the house with her husband. A few minutes later, Blida said she needed to use the bathroom, where she was escorted by a female ABW officer. Despite the standard procedures normally used in such cases, Blida was not handcuffed. Apparently, she had told the officers she had no firearms at home. She then said the presence of the officer in the bathroom disturbed her privacy, but the officer said that, under the rules of service, she could not leave Blida alone. Instead, she stood facing away from Blida, who suddenly drew a gun from an unidentified place and shot herself in the chest.

"The events progressed in a flash," Zbigniew Wassermann, the minister in charge of security services, said in the lower house of parliament April 25, on presenting the government's statement about the circumstances of Blida's death.

ABW officers called an ambulance immediately and tried to resuscitate Blida, but to no avail. The immediate cause of death was bleeding from a damaged artery.

ABW spokeswoman Magdalena Stańczyk said that, following a decision by the ABW head, an internal investigation had been launched to examine and determine all circumstances surrounding Blida's suicide and the ABW's possible responsibility. The deputy head of the ABW in Silesia province, who was in charge of the operation in Siemianowice Śląskie, has been dismissed, along with five other officers who either took part in the operation or supervised it.

According to unconfirmed reports, a brief scuffle between Blida and the female officer might have preceded the deadly shot. The controversy surrounding the death is further intensified by the fact that the officer will soon take a lie detector test.

Meanwhile, the SLD parliamentary group has submitted a proposal to appoint an investigation commission to examine the circumstances of Blida's death. The SLD also demanded that Wassermann and Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro be dismissed. However, neither demand is likely to be heeded in the rightist-dominated parliament.

A key role in getting Blida and other prominent SLD leaders involved in the "coal mafia" affair was played by testimonies from wealthy Silesian businesswoman Barbara Kmiecik, who is facing a number of charges including corruption. Ziobro says that in her testimony Kmiecik had incriminated Blida and said she was also acquainted with former Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdziński and SLD Sejm deputy Wacław Martyniuk. The two firmly denied having any ties to Kmiecik, as did former Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski. In a special statement forwarded to the media, Kwaśniewski wrote that the assertions that he and his wife had supposedly known Kmiecik-not to mention having any business relations with her-were untrue.

"The ABW should pay millions of zlotys in compensation to the family of Barbara Blida," said Leszek Piotrowski, a lawyer representing her husband and son. Piotrowski said would be file a lawsuit within a month or so. "The moral and material losses incurred by the Blida family are enormous, and the damages should be appropriately high," Piotrowski added. He says it is obvious that the ABW officers were "guilty of default of duties" when they entered Blida's house. They did not locate the weapons possessed by Blida and her husband, nor did they frisk Blida or search her bathroom, and, according to her husband's testimony, they lost sight of her after she entered the bathroom.

President Lech Kaczyński says a thorough investigation has to be launched in the case. One of its effects could be working out better methods for state services to use when dealing with public figures who have been either detained or are suspected of crimes. "The thing is to enable the ABW, the Central Investigation Bureau (CBŚ) and the police to differentiate between white-collar criminals and ordinary thugs who are capable of reaching for a gun at any time, not to shoot themselves, but to kill others," he said.

Blida was born in 1949 in Siemianowice Śląskie. In 1976, she graduated from the Building Engineering Department at the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice. From August 1968 to January 1977, she worked at Zakłady Azotowe nitrogen plant in Chorzów and also enrolled for extramural university studies. In 1977, she took a job with Fabud, a construction enterprise working for the needs of the coal industry in Siemianowice Śląskie, where she was promoted from a specialist to chief construction engineer and CEO representative.

For many years, Blida was a prominent SLD activist in Silesia. With her reputation as a strong woman, she was the face of the Silesian left wing.

In 1993-1996, she was minister of regional planning and construction in three leftist governments: she served under Polish Peasants' Party (PSL) Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak and the SLD's Józef Oleksy and Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz. In 1997, she became head of the Housing and Urban Development Office. Most recently, Blida was the president of the Deweloper company in Siemianowice Śląskie. The company is part of the J.W. Construction group, one of the largest developers in Poland.

Blida was a Sejm deputy from 1989 to 2005, always enjoying popularity among voters. In the latest parliamentary elections in 2005, she ran for the Senate, instead of the Sejm, for the first time, but failed to be elected.