The Supreme Court reopens Revolution file

The High Court of Cassation and Justice (Romania’s Supreme Court) confirmed on Monday the reopening of the Revolution file, following the request filed by the former deputy Prosecutor General Bogdan Licu.

Romania’s interim Prosecutor General Bogdan Licu announced on April 5 that he had asked for the criminal prosecution reopening in the Revolution file, which had been closed down last autumn. Licu said that investigations for genocide would come.

Not hearing some key persons, the lack of capitalization of some important information or the lack of post-mortem examination of several dead people are some of the grounds for which the General Prosecutor’s Office called for the case reopening.

“I ordered the reinitiating of the criminal prosecution, as the file’s closure was made based on some incomplete information. During the investigation there was no concern for establishing the basic elements for the events of December 1989,” the Prosecutor General stated.

Licu explained that, although “prosecutors conducted a high amount of proceedings in this case”, they “did not capitalize many information.”

“Prosecutors took no action to disclose the documents related to the hearings held in the senatorial committee, taken into account that thousands of hearings had been held within this committee. Despite the fact the Romanian Intelligence Service drafted a thorough document, it misses from the criminal prosecution file and there is no proof that any action had been taken to obtain this document,” the interim Prosecutor General pointed out.

At the same time, Licu argued that most of the hearings in this case had been “synthetic and formal”, while” the gunners had not been identified”, neither had the guns or the ammunition.

“The way the investigation has been pursued is not compliant with the rules of the European Court of Human Rights. Investigations for genocide are to follow for there are solid clues and because the charges of murder and aggravated murder have been prescribed,” Licu added.

The military prosecutors from the Prosecutor’s Office upon the Supreme Court decided to close down the 1989 Revolution file on October 23 last year. The file investigated 709 dead and 2,198 injured (1,855 shot and 924 remanded), while prosecutors argued there are previous convictions for some of the crimes in some other cases.

The decision to terminate the investigations was taken by military prosecutors Marian Tudor, Codrut Mihalache and Claudiu Culea, on grounds of negative prescription, res judicata (previous judgments in force), inexistence of criminal acts, and amnesty.

The file was closed regarding crimes of war propaganda, genocide, inhuman treatment, war crimes against property and other rights or crimes against humanity. The prosecutors claim these deeds are not stipulated in the criminal law.

The file was also closed for murder and attempt to murder crimes, as well as for instigation to murder, on the ground that the criminal deeds ‘deadline was prescribed. The case was closed for manslaughter, but also for beat or instigation to beat and other violence.

Out of those 709 dead people, 161 are officers and non-commissioned officers, as well as military in service. Prosecutors established that in some cases, the death was caused “by the imprudent operation of the arms, while the victims were among those who were in the close proximity of the perpetrators.”

At the same time, the investigators claim that the death was not produced by shooting in all cases, but there were situations when the victims died due to other causes such as aggression, arson, air or road crash.

Moreover, the ordinance of the prosecutors show that military shot at one another due to stress and fatigue.