All documents which contribute to clarifying the Revolution case must be declassified, said on Monday, Romania’s Attorney General Augustin Lazar.
So far, even though there were three cases open on this subject, the military prosecutors have not declassified the numerous secret documents related to what happened in 1989.
This fact was found by Rodica Cosma, preliminary chamber judge with the High Court of Cassation and Justice, who confirmed in June the reopening of the file that has been classified last year.
Below is what the judge was writing in June about the superficiality of the works from the last Revolution file:
„The investigation has not identified and interviewed the people who exercised the command of the army, the circumstances for taking over the command of the army have not been established, the reserve officers who have been appointed to lead the army were not identified, it has not been established whether the division of the command of the Ministry of Defence was intended, it has not been established to what extent and if there was any concern for gathering information on the status of the events, the persons in the military command have not been identified, the responsibilities of the people who have decided to set up this command have not been established, the persons who provided the information to those who transmitted it later have not been identified, nor how the information was received and who checked it, the people who tried to disorganize the military leadership have not been identified, the information resulting from the acts in the cause has not been used, there was no action towards declassifying the secret documents, it was not established who owned the tools needed for diversions, the opinion of experts in this matter was not asked, there was no analysis made on the activity of the forces distributed in the territory and the way they acted, the time, personnel, equipment , communications, command.”
Asked whether he will request the declassification of documents mentioned in the ordinance on the reopening of the Revolution file, the Attorney General said on Monday: „Obviously, all documents that can contribute, all documents that have a contribution to clarifying the factual circumstances of the Revolution will be declassified.”
Last week, prosecutors from the Military Prosecution Department ordered that the in rem criminal prosecution in the Revolution file to be extended, for the offence of crime against humanity, announced the Prosecutors’ Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice.
According to the prosecutors, the armed incidents occurred in a large number of localities indicate that the actions followed a predetermined plan aimed at allowing the new leaders to take power and obtaining their legitimization.
According to the investigators, the investigations will be resumed on all the facts that were the subject of Case no. 11 / P / 2014, including those committed after December 22, 1989 throughout the country, according to the provisions from the concluding confirmation for reopening the prosecution concerned.
The announcement of extending the charges:
„According to the documents from the file, in order to maintain in power, the new political and military leadership installed after 22.12.1989 caused through the actions and measures ordered the killing, gunshot injury, physical or mental injury, or deprivation of liberty of a large number of people, facts that are within the conditions of typical offense against humanity specified in art. 439 par.1 letter a, g, i and k of the Criminal Code within the meaning of. art. 5 of the Criminal Code.
The situation that led to the assumption of crime against humanity related to the occurrence of a generalized attack was given by the large number of localities where armed incidents took place with the consequences mentioned above.
The way in which the attack took place indicates the existence of a plan for the actions aimed at creating confusion among the armed forces, by dividing the leadership of the Ministry of Defence and disseminating orders, reports and false information, mobilizing people to come out onto the streets and arming the population, and creating the appearance of a „civil war” with confrontations between the armed units of the Ministry of Défense and the Ministry of Interior or between units of the same ministry, with the aim to take power and obtain the legitimization of the new leaders.
For achieving this plan, the Romanian Television has been engaged in transmitting alarmist and sometimes false releases, telephone lines were cut and former military personnel, loyal to the new politico-military leadership was appointed to head the key ministries, with the consequence of generating a psychological and media „war” which caused numerous victims”, stated a press release of the Attorney General, issued last week.
The investigations will resume on all the factual circumstances that were subject of the Case no. 11 / P / 2014, including the acts committed after 22.12.1989 throughout the country, under the provisions from the concluding confirmation for reopening the prosecution concerned.
The case file has been closed last year, although CEDO explained in 2011 that crimes against humanity do not prescribe
The Military Prosecution Department of the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ) closed the Revolution file in October 2015, on the ground that some of the facts have been prescribed or were not provided by the criminal law.
The 709 deceased people, 1,855 people injured by gunshot, 343 people injured in other circumstances or who suffered various injuries and 924 people detained are either victims of the repressive Ceausescu regime (for the interval between December 16 and 22, 1989) or victims of the „confusing and erroneous representation” or the stress and fatigue of the participants in all the events, said PICCJ.
That was the last working case file related to what happened in 1989.
File closure, contradicted in April this year
In April, the Interim Attorney General denied the decision of closing the Revolution file, the decision from 2015, on the ground that the file closure from last October lacked any legal or factual basis.
Below, the reasons why it was decided to reopen the file without waiting for the decision of the High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ), where the appeal of the “21 Decembrie” Association, which attacked the file closure:
- There was no real concern for finding the truth about the events of 1989
- The facts have been incorrectly interpreted
- External factors that contributed to the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe were not taken into account
- Prosecutors have not considered all the existing reports and testimonies
- It not asked the report of the Senate committee that run thousands of hearings and obtained numerous documents
- Although SRI has compiled a paper on the events of 1989, this paper is not in the file
- There were no activities conducted to identify the conditions in which fire was opened in each case
- No autopsies were made
- They have not used important information provided by numerous papers, journals, books, monographs which refer to those events
- The way in which the investigation was made does not comply with the rules of the European Court of Human Rights
Subsequently, the High Court of Cassation also denied the file closure and requested for the case to be reopen.
