A Polish court issued a European arrest warrant yesterday for Helena Wolinska, a Stalinist-era prosecutor and the widow of an Oxford University professor, on charges that she sent a war hero to his death.

Now a British citizen living in Oxford, Ms Wolinska, 88, is accused of masterminding the false arrest and execution of a Polish officer. Two attempts to extradite her have failed.

In 1952 General Emil Fieldorf, who had led the Polish Home Army against the Nazi occupiers, was charged with killing Soviet soldiers and anti-Nazi fighters from Poland’s communist underground. He was executed after a show trial, and his body has never been found. Ms Wolinska is accused of fabricating charges against General Fieldorf, known by the alias Nil, who refused to collaborate with the secret service of the new communist regime.

Yesterday Ms Wolinska dismissed as “political” the attempts to arrest her. She said: “I don’t know why the whole business is coming up again. This is an old case. It is ten years old.” It is also alleged that, as a military prosecutor, Ms Wolinska, who has always refused to appear before a Polish court, arranged for the wrongful arrest of 24 more people, including Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, who had been an inmate at Auschwitz. He served as Foreign Minister twice after the fall of the communist regime in 1989.

Ms Wolinska, who is Jewish, managed to escape from the Warsaw Ghetto set up by the Nazis after the invasion of Poland. In 1939 she joined a pro-Moscow communist resistance movement. She moved to Britain in 1968 and was married to the economist Wlodzimierz Brus, a professorial fellow at Wolfson College, who died in August.

British officials have already turned down two extradition requests lodged by the Polish Government in 1999 and 2001. On both occasions British courts rejected the request on humanitarian grounds, citing her age.

Last month she told reporters that the case against her showed Polish prosecutors had “nothing better to do”. She said that any hearing would be political and anti-Semitic. If convicted, she faces ten years in prison.

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