Romanian High Court judges send 1989 Revolution case back to prosecutors

The judges of the High Court of Cassation and Justice decided on Friday, September 20, to send the case targeting the Romanian Revolution of 1989, in which former president Ion Iliescu faces charges of crimes against humanity, back to the Military Prosecutor's Office to correct certain irregularities in the indictment.

On June 14, another Supreme Court panel found the indictment's irregularity and gave the Prosecutor's Office a deadline to correct it. Since the Prosecutor's Office did not comply, the judges decided on Friday to return the case to the prosecutors, Agerpres reported.

In October last year, the Bucharest Court of Appeal ruled that former president Ion Iliescu, deputy prime minister Gelu Voican Voiculescu, and Iosif Rus, former head of the Military Aviation, could be judged for crimes against humanity. The court found then that the indictment drawn up by the military prosecutors was legal.

The defendants contested the decision at the High Court of Cassation and Justice, and the file was assigned in December 2023 to a panel of two judges. Further on, the magistrates decided that there were irregularities in the indictment.

Before reaching the Bucharest Court of Appeal, the 1989 Revolution case was moved between the courts and the Bucharest Prosecutor's Office for more than four years on procedural grounds, Agerpres noted.

The December 1989 Revolution marked the end of communism in Romania. The civil unrest started in Timișoara on December 16, 1989, and then spread to Bucharest and other Romanian cities starting from the afternoon of December 21, 1989. This forced the Ceauşescu couple to leave the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party. However, they were later caught and sentenced to death after a very short trial.

Most people lost their lives or were injured in the armed confrontations that followed after dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu fled Bucharest.

Prosecutors said that, in order to obtain popular legitimacy and keep the political power held since December 22, 1989, Ion Iliescu "misled public opinion constantly, repeatedly, systematically, through his televised appearances and the issuance of official statements (a mechanism of exercising state power) and undertook, between December 22-30, 1989, the systematic operation to mislead the public opinion carried out by military staff with leading positions of the Ministry of Defense."