Stefan Michnik

Judicial career Michnik became a judge in postwar Poland after completing an eight-month course for military judges in Jelenia Góra. charged with anticommunist activities, while he was a member of the AK, NSZ and NZW. Bronarski (exonerated in post-communist Poland) was given five consecutive death sentences and executed on 18 January 1951 at the Mokotów Prison.

The list of Polish Army officers sentenced by Michnik, and rehabilitated without exception (also posthumously) included: Major Zefiryn Machalla - death sentence issued by Michnik, the jury took a joint decision not to allow defense in the proceedings; Machalla's family was not informed about the execution; Colonel Maksymilian Chojecki - death sentence, not executed; Major Andrzej Rudolf Czaykowski - death sentence, Michnik participated personally in his execution; Major Jerzy Lewandowski - death sentence, not executed; Colonel Stanisław Wecki - lecturer at the Academy of the General Staff, sentenced to 13 years in prison, and died as a result of torture; Major Zenon Tarasiewicz, case Sr 12/52, 12 years; Colonel Romuald Sidorski - editor in Chief of the Quartermaster Review, sentenced to 12 years in prison, and died because of lack of medical assistance; Lieutenant Colonel Aleksander Kowalski, and; Major Karol Sęk - artilleryman from Radom, officer of the anticommunist National Armed Forces, and death sentence, executed in 1952.

Emigration After being denied a US visa, Michnik fled Poland for Sweden during 1968 Polish political crisis. He lived as a retired librarian in a small town of Storvreta near Uppsala

He built connections with Radio Free Europe and the Paris-based Kultura, where he wrote articles under the anonym "Karol Szwedowicz".

Since August 2007 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance deliberated on a motion to request his extradition. On 25 February 2010, the Military Garrison Court in Warsaw at the request of the investigation division of the IPN issued an official arrest warrant for Stefan Michnik. In October 2010, Polish prosecutors issued a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) on the same basis. On 18 November 2010, the court in Uppsala refused to extradite Stefan Michnik to Poland explaining that his alleged criminal acts (see communist crime) committed in Poland fall outside the statute of limitations in Sweden.

On 8 November 2018, the Military Court in Warsaw issued for the second time a European Arrest Warrant in connection with 30 offences that Michnik committed in the years 1952–53 against representatives of the democratic opposition and former members of the Underground State, including unlawful death sentences. Michnik had claimed that he was not aware of the death sentences, which, according to him, was a decision made higher up in the judicial hierarchy. A Swedish court in Gothenburg refused Poland's appeal for the extradition of Stefan Michnik.

In his final years, he lived at a nursing home in Gothenburg. He died on 27 July 2021, at the age of 91. His half-brother Adam published his obituary in his Gazeta Wyborcza.