Romanian Communist-era prison commander gets final 20-year jail sentence

The High Court of Cassation and Justice (ICCJ) ruled a final 20-year jail sentence for Ion Ficior, a former commander of Periprava Communist-era labor camp. Ficior was found guilty of crimes against humanity. The High Court has thus maintained the sentence of 20 years ruled by the Bucharest Court of Appeal in late-March 2016. The Prosecutor’s Office of the High Court of Cassation and Justice sent Ion Ficior to court in the summer of 2014, on charges of crimes against humanity. The case was based on a notification made by the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile (IICCMER). According to the prosecutors, between 1958 and 1963, when Ficior led the Periprava prison, he introduced and coordinated a repressive, abusive, inhumane, and discretionary detention regime against the prisoners. More than 100 political prisoners died in the prison in that period. According to investigators, the prisoners were isolated from their families and other people, they were held in miserable conditions, in the cold, without food and water. They also lacked medicines and had to work in inhumane conditions. Ion Ficior is the second Communist-era prison commander who is sentenced to prison in Romania. Alexandru Visinescu is currently serving time, after being sentenced to 20 years in prison in February last year. Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com