DIICOT prosecutors have asked the military prosecutor’s office to give them the file regarding the violence during the Diaspora rally on August 10, 2018 to check if they can unite this file with another case probing into an alleged coup d’etat, DIICOT head Felix Banila has announced today.
The directorate for military prosecutor’s offices has opened a file on the violence reported on August 10 last year during the Diaspora protest meeting in Victoriei Square, violence that left tens of injured (protesters and gendarmes). The current and the former heads of the Romanian Gendarmerie, Cătălin Sindile and Sebastian Cucoş, have been prosecuted in this file, alongside the head of the Bucharest Gendarmerie, Laurentiu Cazan and a secretary of state in the Interior Minister, Mihai Dan Chirică. They are investigated for complicity to abuse of office and complicity to abusive conduct.
At the same time, DIICOT has opened a file following the Diaspora protest, after the Romanian Gendarmerie had file their own complaint in the August 2018 rally, claiming crimes against constitutional order, namely a coup d’etat.
Almost 300 criminal complaints against gendarmes were registered at the Military Prosecutor’s Office in Bucharest after the August Diaspora rally last year.