Two years since the August 10 protest
The judicial saga of the controversial investigation into the brutal Gendarme intervention against anti-government protesters, continues.
Eugen Coroianu, 11.08.2020, 14:00
The judicial saga of the controversial “August 10 investigation continues in Romania. The case concerns the gendarme crackdown on a massive protest in the summer of 2018, when around 100,000 Romanians, many of them returning from abroad, gathered in Bucharests Victoria Square to demand the resignation of Viorica Dăncilăs cabinet.
People were disgruntled with the Social Democratic government and its decisions regarding the laws regulating the judiciary, as well as with the sacking of Laura Codruta Kovesi as chief of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate.
Hundreds of complaints were filed by the protesters, accusing the gendarmes of using excessive force, including tear gas, against them. Participants said the rally was mostly peaceful, and that the gendarmes were attacked by just a handful of troublemakers, who could have been easily controlled by the police.
The “August 10 case, which looks into the gendarme intervention and is investigated by the Directorate Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) was closed last month. Prosecutors argued at the time that there was a “moral complicity between the peaceful protesters in Victoria Square and the violent ones, which encouraged the latters aggressive conduct. The prosecutors also said there was no proof of an attempted coup, as the gendarmes and Social Democratic leaders had claimed.
Last week however, the DIICOT chief Giorgiana Hosu reverted the decision to close the case, and greenlighted the investigation against former senior gendarme officials. She explained that the prosecutor who closed the case had not reviewed the evidence put together by the Military Prosecutors Office, and had not heard the suspects, victims and witnesses once again.
According to Agerpres news agency, if the Court upholds DIICOTs decision, prosecution will be resumed, for charges including abuse of office, improper participation in abusive conduct, misrepresentation and fraud, aiding and abetting a perpetrator, fraud and misrepresentation.
On Monday, the Bucharest Court of Appeals declined jurisdiction over the matter, and the case was referred to the Bucharest Court, as the former gendarme chiefs had requested.
The Liberal deputy PM Raluca Turcan described August 10, 2018 as an ‘open wound of recent Romanian democracy, and emphasized that the violent repression of citizen rights must be punished. President Klaus Iohannis said last week that it was important for the ‘actual culprits to be brought to justice and that it is ‘rather bad that this is taking so long.
Last year the interim president of the Social Democratic Party Marcel Ciolacu said the situation on August 10 had been ‘mismanaged and handled a little recklessly, and that the Social Democrats had paid for this by losing the presidential election.
(translated by: Ana-Maria Popescu)
