Romania’s first post-1989 president, Ion Iliescu, and his allies confiscated the anti-communist revolution and executed a military coup, according to military prosecutor Cătălin Ranco Pițu, who signed the indictment in the 1989 Revolution Case.

The prosecutor gave an hour-long interview to Digi24 on Monday, December 22, to mark the Revolution. During the program, he presented the conclusions he reached after gathering over 3,000 files to charge Ion Iliescu, Gelu Voican Voiculescu, and former military aviation chief Iosif Rus for crimes against humanity. 

The 1989 Romanian Revolution is still hotly debated. Some say that the communist elites enacted a coup against the Nicolae Ceaușescu regime, using the people. According to this version of the events, shady power brokers managed to retain their positions by gathering around Ion Iliescu. Others stress that the Revolution was real and enacted bravely by tens of thousands of Romanians, over 1,100 of whom were killed.

Prosecutor Pițu argued for another version of the Revolution, one in which the honest anti-dictatorship protests were confiscated by the incoming regime. “Ion Iliescu confiscated the Revolution. Those responsible are those who took power, who needed an enemy to obtain legitimacy,” the prosecutor said.

The reason why the Revolution is still being investigated is that more people died in the chaos after Nicolae Ceaușescu’s capture than when the dictator was still technically still in power. 

On December 22, 1989, the Ceaușescu couple had been imprisoned by soldiers in Târgoviște after fleeing protestors in Bucharest. “Nicolae Ceaușescu hoped for a last-minute rescue, right up until the moment he was taken in front of that wall, where he was executed,” said Pițu, referencing the death of the dictator on Christmas Day. 

The regime was leaderless by December 22, and 3 days later, the dictator was dead. Nevertheless, people kept dying. Army documents state that between December 22 and 30, the Romanian army fired over 12.6 million rounds, as well as hundreds of shells and grenades against the so-called “terrorists.”

“That enormous consumption of ammunition, specific to a confrontation with an enemy who is attacking, was fundamentally due to a securist-terrorist psychosis. Beginning on the evening of December 22, the new political-military leadership of Romania issued a great many communiqués. At the same time, dozens, perhaps even hundreds of diversionary orders were given, all to invent an enemy of the Romanian nation, an extremely dangerous, ferocious enemy, the so-called securist-terrorist,” the prosecutor argued.

The enemy was manufactured by Ion Iliescu and his allies, according to Pițu. They convinced the army and the population, who were armed at that time, that such terrorists existed. 

“Soldiers and thousands of armed civilians went out to fight the terrorists. But all of them identified each other as the securist-terrorist enemy. That is because, for example, on December 23, Ion Iliescu went on television and announced to the entire nation that the terrorists look exactly like us. They are dressed in civilian clothes, they are extremely perfidious, they are dangerous, they shoot from any position, practically indicating everyone who was on the streets of Romania’s major cities. The confusions were enormous,” he argued. 

The prosecutor concluded that starting with December 22, what had started as a revolution became a military coup that benefited “Ion Iliescu and his political-military entourage.” The new regime had deep ties with Moscow, as Iliescu, who studied in the USSR, was an agent of Soviet influence according to Pițu.

“Unfortunately, it was not only Iliescu who was dependent on Moscow, but almost all those who took power in December ’89. There is evidence of their collaboration with Soviet intelligence services,” he said. 

Ion Iliescu, Romania’s first president after the fall of communism in December 1989 and one of the country’s most influential and controversial political figures, died in the summer of 2025.

radu@romania-insider.com

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