After more than 10 years of investigations, prosecutors have submitted to court the first indictments in the case of the 1998 killing of Gen. Marek Papała, the former national chief of police. Papała was shot dead in Warsaw in front of the apartment block where he lived. His assassination bore all the signs of a contract killing, with evidence pointing to business and political circles of that period.

The defendants are Andrzej Zieliński, a former boss of the largest Polish criminal group of the 1990s, called the Pruszków Mafia, who is charged with inciting the assassination of Papała; and Ryszard Bogucki, who is charged with complicity in the crime. Both Zieliński and Bogucki are now serving prison terms, the latter for complicity in the killing of Andrzej Kolikowski, a former boss of the Pruszków Mafia shot dead in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane Dec. 5, 1999. The details of the indictments have not yet been disclosed. It is not clear whether the prosecutors are going to ask the United States for the extradition of Edward Mazur, a Polish-American businessman suspected of ordering the assassination. It is believed that huge drug deals were behind the assassination of Papała.