Romanian media reveal identities of Communist torturers after recent crime accusations

An 88-year old Romanian recently came under the media spotlight after being formally accused of having killed several political prisoners and tortured countless others during the Communist period. Alexandru Vişinescu, the former commander in chief of the Ramnicu Sarat penitentiary, was recently accused of manslaughter by the Institute for the Investigation of Communism Crimes. This led to a series of media articles about him, and investigators from the newspaper Gandul found the now jovial Visinescu, currently a retired officer living downtown Bucharest, who however turned violent when publicly faced with the accusations. Visinescu is not the only one who was sent to court for his crimes. In a premiere move in Romania, the Institute for the Investigation of Communism Crimes and the newspaper Gandul published the list of prison heads, the so called 'tormentors', who between 1947 and 1965 tortured political enemies of the Communist Party. This turned into a media campaign that started with Visinescu. The newspaper Gandul plans to publish investigations about all those still alive from the 35 lot, detailing their crimes as well as their lives after the fall of the Communism in 1989. Under Alexandru Visinescu's helm, political leaders and dissidents such as Corneliu Coposu, Ion Mihalache and Ion Diaconescu were tortured while in jail. Visinescu, known as a cruel torturer, now says he is not to blame, as he was merely doing his job. His crimes from over 50 years ago are not subject to the prescription term, as the Communist authorities prevented these people from being prosecuted. Visinescu was commander in chief of the Ramnicu Sarat jail from 1956 until 1963, when the prison was closed down. Ion Mihalache, founder and leader of the Agrarian Party, died in this prison in 1963 after being tortured by Visinescu himself while serving his life imprisonment sentence. Later on, the media found out that young Visinescu had been part of the execution squad who killed Marshall Ion Antonescu in 1946. He later on became chief if the women's penitentiary at Mislea, where he was known as a cruel torturer, which won him the promotion to chief of prison at Ramnicu Sarat. Several other fellow inmates of Agrarian leader Mihalache remember the cruel conditions from the prison led by Visinescu, who was constantly beating the inmates, irrespective of their age and health status. Ion-Ovidiu Borcea, who was watching from the adjoining cell through small holes in the door, says: “The officer and the commander in chief continuously beat him, got him sick and did not offer him medical care. They would enter his cell and throw a bucket of cold water on him in the middle of winter. He (e.n. Mihalache) would yell << This is Ion Mihalache, They're killing me!>>. This crime cannot be forgotten.”