Romania’s General Prosecutor has reportedly asked President Klaus Iohannis to approve criminal proceedings against former President Ion Iliescu over the crackdown of an anti-government protest 34 years ago which caused civilian deaths and left large numbers injured, Radio Free Europe reported.
A brutal intervention of coal miners against protesters in University Square, in June 1990, officially caused six deaths, more than 1,000 people injured and hundreds of arrests. Associations representing the victims say the death toll was much higher. Iliescu, who had won a landslide victory a month before publicly thanked the miners who had traveled from coal mines in western Romania to quell the protest.
Romania has failed to prosecute the leaders of the time for crimes committed during the revolution and the coal miners’ crackdown which turned Romania into something of a pariah state among the countries newly liberated from communim. Many Romanians believe that justice officials are waiting for Iliescu, now 94, to die to avoid a court case involving a former head of state that could end with a prison sentence.
In June 2017, the former president Iliescu was sent to trial for crimes against humanity, along with former Prime Minister Petre Roman and former director of the SRI intelligence agency, Virgil Magureanu. However, in December 2020 the High Court of Cassation and Justice returned the case to the Military Prosecutor’s Office, telling it to rebuild the prosecution from scratch.
Prosecutors have to redo the entire procedure, which includes seeking approval from the head of state to indict Iliescu.
Military prosecutors said that in the days preceding the violence, authorities had decided to violently crack down on demonstrators who were in University Square. Protesters were calling for former high-level communists to be barred from office six months after the December 1989 revolution where more than 1,000 people were killed.
The miners’ assault allegedly involved the interior and defense ministries of the time, the Romanian Intelligence Agency as well as more than 10,000 miners and other workers.
According to the Military Prosecutor’s Office, the attack was carried out on the morning of June 13, 1990. Four people were shot dead, and a total of 1,388 people were injured. Some 1250 were arrested on political grounds.
More than 200 people were picked up and transported to a military unit of the Interior Ministry outside Bucharest, and allowed to leave after a brief investigation.
Military prosecutors are accusing Iliescu of giving the order for the demonstrators to be forcibly evicted from University Square, and using miners and workers from large state enterprises in Bucharest to do so.
Iliescu has not made any public appearance since March 2017, when he went to the General Prosecutor’s Office, on prosecutors’ summons for crimes against humanity committed during the bloody revolution.
Romania’s Supreme Court, which tries top level-officials, decided to send it to the Bucharest Court of Appeal in February 2023, on the grounds that it would fall within its competence because at that time Iliescu was not president of Romania in December 1989.
Iliescu’s criminal investigation sent in for reinvestigation
