Romanian Prosecutor General asks President to OK criminal prosecution of Ion Iliescu in the Miners Riot file
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Prosecutor General Alex Florența is asking President Klaus Iohannis for approval to start the criminal investigation of former President Ion Iliescu in the June 1990 Miners Riot file, judicial sources told Agerpres.
According to official data, after the miners’ brutal intervention against the protesters in University Square, from June 13 to 15 in 1990, six people died, more than 1,000 were injured and hundreds of people were arrested. However, the associations of mining victims say that the number of dead people would be more than 100.
Initially, in June 2017, former president Ion Iliescu was sent to court for crimes against humanity, along with former prime minister Petre Roman and former SRI director Virgil Măgureanu, but in December 2020 the High Court of Cassation and Justice decided to return the file to the Prosecutor’s Office Military, for rebuilding the investigation from scratch.
The judges then decided to cancel all the evidence collected by the prosecutors, having found the illegality of the indictment by which Ion Iliescu was sent to court, along with Petre Roman, Gelu Voican Voiculescu, Virgil Măgureanu, general (res.) Mugurel Cristian Florescu, admiral (res. ) Emil “Cico” Dumitrescu, Cazimir Ionescu, Adrian Sârbu and Miron Cozma.
Practically, the prosecutors have to redo the entire procedure, including asking for the head of state’s approval for the indictment of Ion Iliescu, now 94 years old.
The military prosecutors indicated that, on June 11 and 12, 1990, the state authorities decided to launch a violent attack against the demonstrators in the University Square in Bucharest, who were campaigning mainly for the adoption of point 8 of the Timişoara Proclamation and expressed, in peaceful way, political opinions, in contradiction with those of the majority that formed the political power at that time.
Forces of the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of National Defense, the SRI, as well as more than 10,000 miners and other workers from several areas of the country were allegedly involved in this attack, illegally.
According to the Military Prosecutor’s Office, the attack was carried out in the morning of June 13, 1990, with the following consequences: the death by shooting of four people, the injury to the physical or mental integrity of a total number of 1,388 people, the deprivation of the fundamental right to freedom, for political reasons, of a total number of 1,250 people.
As part of this action, more than 200 people were picked up and transported to a military unit of the Ministry of the Interior in Măgurele, where they were detained until the afternoon of the same day, when they were allowed to leave after a brief investigation.
Ion Iliescu has not made any public appearance since March 2017, when he went to the General Prosecutor’s Office, being cited by prosecutors in the Revolution file, in which he was sent to court for crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, this file was also passed between the Military Prosecutor’s Office and the supreme court, which in February 2023 decided to send it to the Bucharest Court of Appeal, on the grounds that it would be within its competence because at that time Ion Iliescu was not president of Romania.
The former president Ion Iliescu was accused by the military prosecutors of being the one who gave the order for the forced evacuation of the demonstrators from the University Square, including by using some workers from the big enterprises in Bucharest.
Iliescu turned 94 on March 3, 2024.
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