| SENTENCES AND THE REFORM OF THE JUDICIARY 12/03/2009 |
| (2009-03-12) |
| Last updated: 2009-03-13 20:15 EET |
''Ion Iliescu absolved of bloodshed'', the Romania Libera daily headlines a court decision to clear the historical leader of the post-communist Left, Social Democratic senator Ion Iliescu and 30 other suspects of undermining state authority, perpetrating diversionary acts and disseminating false information during the June 1990 miners’ raids on Bucharest. Several months ago, former Romanian president Ion Iliescu (between 1990 - 1996, 2000 - 2004 respectively) was also cleared of instigation and complicity in the killing of four Bucharesters in the then incidents, which the judiciary and the public opinion don't seem to agree on.
For the media, civil society and the victims, the raid on Bucharest by miners coming from the Jiu Valley, in central Romania, had no other reason but Iliescu's public appeal to citizens “to save democracy”, endangered by a presumptive putsch staged by the Far Right, that had already been repressed by the army. Many of the hundreds of wounded and those abusively detained on June 14th and 15th, when miners took control of Bucharest, were presumptive rebels only because they were wearing beards and glasses.
Beyond speculations by the press, which quotes legal sources and describes Iliescu's clearance as the cost paid by the Social Democratic Party and the pro-presidential Liberal Democratic Party to forge a government coalition, we are left with an unanswered question: why has it taken two decades for prosecutors to absolve the former president. A possible explanation might be the fact that two years after Romania’s EU accession, the Romanian judiciary is still under Brussels' monitoring.
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2025-04-03
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