August 10, after 5 years
The Prosector General's Office sent to court the heads of the Romanian Gendarmerie in office at the time of the anti-government rally on August 10, 2018
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Ştefan Stoica, 09.08.2023, 14:00
On August 10, 2018, representatives of the Romanian Diaspora organized a large rally in Bucharest against the left-wing government of that time, accused of trying to divert the natural progress of the judicial reform in order to get rid of the corruption cases involving the Social Democratic leader of the time, Liviu Dragnea, and his associates. The rally, which was attended by tens of thousands of people, ended with the brutal intervention of law enforcement, considered disproportionate and to a large extent unjustified.
In 2018, anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutors started a case which was closed two years later and reopened only last spring, following a protesters appeal. Now, the Prosecutor Generals Office has announced that the heads of the Gendarmerie at that time, as well as other employees of the institution, will be tried for crimes such as abuse of office, intellectual forgery and abusive behavior. According to the prosecutors, on August 10, 2018, during the protest rally that took place in Bucharest, near the Government headquarters, the commander of the action and its coordinators, all colonels in the Gendarmerie, improperly performed their duties and ordered subordinate gendarmes, in violation of the legal provisions, to intervene by force and disperse the entire mass of protesters attending.
The consequences of the defendants actions, the investigators claim, were the limitation of the freedom of assembly and the right to physical and mental integrity of the demonstrators, and caused physical suffering or injuries, requiring up to 50 days of medical care for healing, in the case of more than 400 people. The investigations carried out in the case showed that the forceful intervention of the gendarmes was done in violation of the principles of necessity, gradualness and proportionality, principles enshrined in the legal regulations on the matter and reflected in the jurisprudence of the ECHR. Thus, the gendarmes acted not only against the people who demonstrated violently, in order to isolate them and apply the necessary legal measures, but also against the peaceful demonstrators, who constituted the vast majority of the protesters.
Military gendarmes used acoustic hand grenades, tear gas irritant hand grenades, tear gas irritant cartridges, high-capacity sprayers and hand sprayers during the mission. According to the Public Ministry, more than 300 of the injured persons have been civil parties in the case. The Declic community, which is a platform for petitions, calls to action and online activism created exclusively for Romania, called on the Bucharest Military Court to urgently judge the August 10 case, because there are only 3 years left until the statute of limitations and the culprits could escape punishment. The members of the Declic Community will come to Piaţa Victoriei, on August 10, to demand justice for the victims of the abuses committed by gendarmes in 2018. (MI)
