James Coomarasamy in Warsaw reports on the case

Helena Wolinska, who is 79 and married to an Oxford history professor, was Poland's chief military prosecutor in the 1950s, and the Polish authorities allege she is responsible for the unlawful arrest and subsequent execution of General Emil Fieldorf, one of the country's leading World War II resistance heroes.

General Fieldorf was commander in chief of the Kedyw, an anti-Nazi diversionary group which was part of the Polish National Army then based in Britain.

After the war, the secret police of the pro-Soviet Polish communist regime accused General Fieldorf of having ordered the execution of Soviet resistance fighters, and he was hanged in 1953 after a one-day trial.

Rehabilitated

In 1989, following the collapse of the communist regime in Poland, General Fieldorf was officially rehabilitated. The Polish military prosecutor is now conducting an investigation into his death, and last month he summoned Ms Wolinska to testify in the case.

It was after she had failed to appear that the Polish Justice Ministry took the decision to set the extradition process in motion.

Justice Minister Hanna Suchocka has ordered a temporary arrest warrant to be issued against Ms Wolinska, who, if found guilty, faces up to ten years in prison.

Ms Wolinska, however, denies the charges and has vowed to fight any extradition. She has lived in Britain since 1968.

Sources within the Soviet-era Polish dissident movement said Ms Wolinska was responsible for hundreds of arrests in the Soviet-era.

She is believed to have lost her job in 1956 after a new administration drew back from the excesses of the post-war years. She finally fled Poland to Oxford in 1968 to escape anti-semitic purges by the communist authorities.