This week, further hearings have been held at the Bucharest General Prosecutor’s Office on the file concerning the June 1990 miners’ raid,
\nwhich put an end to a large-scale protest against the left-wing power that took
\nhold of Romania after the fall of the Communist regime in December 1989. On
\nWednesday, prosecutors indicted the former head of state, Ion Iliescu, with
\ncrimes against humanity, alongside another two of his then collaborators: the
\nDirector of the Romanian Intelligence Office, Virgil Magureanu, and the Defense
\nMinister Victor Stanculescu. Also part of this investigation are other
\nresounding names such as the former Prime Minister Petre Roman and his deputy
\nGelu Voican Voiculescu. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On Thursday, the prosecutors also indicted the former
\nleader of the miners in Jiu Valley, Miron Cozma, who said he was innocent and
\nstressed that it was not him who had brought the miners to Bucharest in June
\n1990, but the then authorities. He himself was brought to Bucharest by force,
\nCozma claimed. Cozma was accused alongside the former presidential adviser Emil
\nCico Dumitrescu and the former vice-chairman of the National Union Provisionary Council, Cazimir Ionescu. We recall that in June 1990, against the background
\nof violent incidents in the capital, which the army had already managed to
\nstifle, the former head of state Ion Iliescu invoked an attempted far-right coup, and
\ncalled on the population to defend the democratic institutions of the country. The raid of the
\nminers from Jiu Valley on Bucharest, where they attacked the University, the
\nheadquarters of the opposition parties and the offices of some independent newspapers,
\nended in four officially registered dead and hundreds of wounded, as well as
\nover one thousand people arrested abusively. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The miners’ raid file
\ncame back on prosecutors’ table in February 2015, a few months after the
\nEuropean Court of Human Rights condemned the Bucharest authorities for the way
\nin which they had managed the situation back in June 1990. On September 17th,
\n2014, the Court obliged Romania to restart the investigation and to pay 60
\nthousand Euro in damages to the three plaintiffs who could not find justice in
\nthe Romanian courts. In Bucharest, the miners’ raid had been investigated into
\nfor eight years, but the case was eventually closed, and nobody was prosecuted. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In Strasbourg, however, the Human Rights Court’s judges based their decision
\non evidence of violation of several articles of the European Convention on
\nHuman Rights, such as the one regarding torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. After 25 years, the miners’ raid file is now reopening old
\nwounds and is stirring fierce debates. Prosecutors hope to bring justice in this case, the
\nserious event to have ever occurred in Romania after the anti-communist revolution of
\nDecember 1989. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After 25 years, the file concerning the miners’ raid of June 1990 is back on prosecutors’ desk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65767,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[30170,32197,38201,38203,29409,38202,38198],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-65766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-european-court-of-human-rights","tag-ion-iliescu","tag-miners-raid-1990","tag-miron-cozma","tag-petre-roman","tag-victor-stanculescu","tag-virgil-magureanu"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n