August 11, 2016 UPDATE
PM Ciolos says Sky News report on weapon smuggling in Romania is unacceptable
Newsroom, 11.08.2016, 00:05
QUEEN ANNE – Members of European royal families will attend the funeral of Queen Anne, the Press Office of King Michael I announced on Thursday. So far, members of the Russian, Austrian and German imperial families and of the royal families of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg have confirmed their presence. The casket will be in the Throne Room of the Royal Palace in Bucharest until Friday. On Wednesday, at the former summer residence of Romanian royalty, Peles Castle, in Sinaia, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, Moldovan President Nicolae Timofti, and Romanian PM Dacian Ciolos were among the many officials paying their respects. The funeral is scheduled for Saturday in Curtea de Arges. King Michael will be unable to attend the funeral due to ill health. The queen died on August 1st aged 92 in Switzerland, after a battle with cancer.
REPORT – The PM of Romania Dacian Ciolos Thursday rated the Sky News story on alleged weapon smuggling in Romania as unacceptable. He emphasised that a country should not be shed negative light on without evidence, and announced that Romanian authorities had taken a stand on the matter. The Prosecutors Office Investigating Terrorism and Organised Crime (DIICOT) has started an investigation. Several house searches were conducted in northern Romania, which identified the individuals featured in the story, and the weapons were seized. The DIICOT head prosecutor Daniel Horodniceanu has said that so far the report appears to have been staged. On Thursday the institution ordered the prosecution of 3 of the Romanians appearing in the report, including the one who introduced the British journalists to the alleged smugglers. One of the 3 has been detained, said his lawyer. They have been accused of aiding in giving false information, of setting up an organised crime group and of breaching weapon regulations. The British tv channel stands by its report, although the British broadcasting regulatory body has received several notifications regarding the Sky News story. The British journalists argue that, after two months of negotiations, they were pointed to an isolated area in Romania, where they met weapon smugglers who allegedly brought in weapons from Ukraine to be sold in western Europe and the Middle East.
CRIMEA – A new escalation of tensions between Ukraine and Russia is in the focus on attention of the international community. The UN Security Council is to discuss the growing tension between Moscow and Kyiv over Crimea, after Russias accusations that Ukraine plotted attacks in the disputed Black Sea peninsula. NATO also expressed concerns with a new escalation of tensions between the two countries. The President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, Thursday put all military units near Crimea and the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk on alert, for fear of a military conflict with Russia. The announcement came after on Wednesday his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, accused Kyiv of using “terror tactics so as to reignite conflict and destabilise Crimea. Russia annexed this Black Sea Peninsula in 2014. The conflict in east Ukraine, between government forces and pro-Russian insurgents, has so far killed 9,500 people.
