Military Prosecutor’s Office reopens files on communist crimes

The Military Prosecutor’s Office reopens several files related to the crimes committed during the communist regime, after Bucharest Military Court of Appeal decided on Wednesday to abide by the ordinance issued by Romania Prosecutor General Tiberiu Ni?u last week, which ordered that several investigations on the death of some Romanian dissidents, including the one of famous Gheorghe Ursu, should be reopened.

Ursu case mainly targets to the investigation of the former secret police officer Marin Pârvulescu, allegedly guilty of the dissident’s death. Andrei Ursu, the son of the famous dissident, went on hunger strike after several courts abandoned a criminal prosecution against Ursu’s alleged murderers. No later than Friday, Andrei Ursu said he had interrupted hunger strike after Prosecutor General’ s ordinance that quashed all decisions of dropping charges in his father’ case so far, thus allowing the reopening of more criminal files within “The Communism Trial”.

Dinu Zamfirescu, honorary president of the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile said “coevals should feel a little bit what those time meant for us”. “Everything is possible provided for the political will, for CNSAS is holding evidence, criminal files, informative notes on that. There are 25 kilometers of files at CNSAS (the National Council for Studying Securitate Archives).

Gheorghe Ursu’s famous story

Gheorghe Ursu was a Romanian construction engineer, poet, diarist and dissident. A left-wing activist and avant-garde intellectual who joined the Romanian Communist Party as a youth, he was soon after disillusioned with the communist regime, and became one of its most outspoken critics. For most of his life, Gheorghe Ursu was active in cultural circles, and maintained contacts with literary and artistic figures.

Ursu publicly denounced the policies of Nicolae Ceau?escu, and was kept under surveillance during the 1960s by the country’s secret police—the Securitate. A journal in which he recorded his thoughts and opinions was the subject of a denunciation, which eventually led to his arrest in 1984. He was beaten to death on November 1985, while in the custody of the Securitate.

Ursu’s death was a matter of international scandal and, after the Romanian, the subject of an inquiry. Much controversy arose over the new authorities’ alleged procrastination, before two former officers were sentenced for his murder. A third one was jailed for confiscating his diary, most of which remains lost.