Polish Petition Seeks Freedom for Activists

WARSAW —  A petition signed by 239 factory workers in southwestern Poland demanded the release of four activists charged in connection with two weeks of strikes, activist leaders said Monday.

Jozef Pinior and three other activists of the illegal Polish Socialist Party have been held since May 5 in Wroclaw on charges of assaulting a plant guard. The activist leaders say the guard attacked the four, two men and two women, as they were distributing leaflets at the plant, which employs nearly 4,000 people and makes electric machines.

Pinior is a regional Solidarity leader; another of the four, Czeslaw Borowczyk, was chairman of the Solidarity unit at the factory before the independent trade union was declared illegal in 1982.