Romanian police are investigating a nationalist lawmaker who called for government offices to be blown up after presidential elections were canceled in Romania.
Police detained Tiberiu Bosutar as he was driving in Bucharest, and he was taken to his home town of Bistrita for questioning. Police said they had taken evidence from two properties after he said the county prefecture and the County Electoral Office should be blown up in a post on social media. A court has placed restrictions on his movements for the next 30 days.
“We should blow up these buildings, man! Arrest me!,” he said on a live Facebook feed on December 7 a day after presidential elections were annulled. “Look, my colleague is telling me to shut up, saying I will be arrested for incitement. Inciting what? The right to be free, the right to speak? How long will I be a lawmaker, how long will it take until you handcuff me?” the local leader of Bistrita AUR branch said.
Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the presidential elections on December 6, two days before the runoff, after declassified reports revealed that Russia had intervened to help a far-right candidate, Calin Georgescu. The unprecedented development stunned many but also ended protests over Georgescu’s inexplicable win in the first round_ going from single digits to winning the first round.
The Bistrita-Nasaud County police department announced on Saturday that they had searched two properties belonging to Bosutar in the Bistrita-Nasaud and Suceava counties.
“The criminal case is being coordinated by the Prosecutor’s Office, related to committing the crime of public instigation. During the searches, objects of probative (that provide proof or evidence) value were discovered and taken away,” the police said.
AUR party leader George Simion, however, called it “an attempt at political intimidation,” and said the cancelled elections were “a coup d’etat.” He said that Bosutar was not literally calling for the buildings to be dynamited, but for Romanians to overturn the government democratically.
Boşutar,50, a former environmental activist who was in the news after he was beaten up by a forester in 2021, was elected to the Chamber of Deputies on December 1 for the nationalist AUR party.
