European Court of Human Rights decides Romania will pay EUR 350,000 in damages over failure to investigate 1989 revolution deaths

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) recently convicted Romania and imposed a EUR 350,000 fine in a case vs a group of 72 Romanian citizens, victims or relatives of victims of the 1989 revolution. According to the ECHR, the applicants complained that the authorities had failed to carry out an effective investigation into the deaths of their family members or the ill-treatment to which they themselves had been subjected during the repression of the anticommunist demonstrations of December 1989 in Timişoara. Romania was found to have violated Articles 2 and 3, and will have to pay EUR 5,000 for each of 65 of the Romanians, and EUR 3,500 each for seven of them. Romania was also recently convicted in two other cases by the ECHR, in a case against a citizen who complained of poor detention conditions, and in another where a Romanian citizen complained of disproportionate interference of criminal and civil liability findings with his freedom of expression. In the first case, Gavril Györgypál, a Romanian national now living in Budapest, who had been convicted to jail for drug trafficking, was awarded EUR 6,150 by the ECHR for the poor imprisonment conditions. The second case involved Valerică Niculescu-Dellakeza, an actor at the Craiova Theater, who called the director of the theatre a “seven-handed stage director” and accused him in an open letter of holding several posts simultaneously and misappropriating public funds. He was found guilty of defamation and sentenced to a criminal fine and the payment of compensation and costs. However, he said he was convicted without him being heard, which denied him the right to a fair trial, and the ECHR also agreed with a disproportionate interference with his right to freedom of expression. The Romanian state will have to pay him EUR 1,700 (pecuniary damage), EUR 5,900 (non-pecuniary damage) and EUR 200 (costs and expenses). editor@romania-insider.com (photo source: ECHR)