On November 17, 1985, the anti-communist dissident Gheorghe Ursu was killed by torture in security custody.
Gheorghe Ursu was born on July 1, in Bessarabia, in the town of Soroca, being the son of Vasile Ursu (from Galati) and Margareta (from Măgura Ilvei Năsăud). Gheorghe studied at the school in Soroca until 1941 when the family moved to Galati. He continued to study at the Vasile Alecsandri high school in Galaţi. His maternal grandparents, along with 10 other family members (who were Jewish) were killed in Auschwitz.
Gheorghe Ursu was a construction engineer, poet, writer and dissident.
In 1970, a volume of poems called “Mereu Doi” was published by the Litera publishing house with a preface written by Nina Cassian.
Gheorghe Ursu was arrested on September 21, 1985, on the grounds that he was in possession of currency. In reality, he was arrested following the denunciation of a co-worker, who came into possession of his private diary, which was later confiscated by the Security. The diary had 61 notebooks representing the daily entries for the period 1949-1984 and other manuscripts.
He was placed in the same cell with the “violent recidivists” Marian Cliţă and Gheorghe Radu, and the militiamen were ordered not to intervene, even if noises could be heard from behind the bars. In parallel, Gheorghe Ursu was taken out of his cell and “interrogated” daily, by “specific methods”, by the Securitate. The dissident resisted until November 17, 1985, and the state authorities noted “peritonitis” as the official cause of death
Following the confiscation of the Intimate Diary, his friend, the poet Nina Cassian, preferred not to return to Romania and emigrated to the USA.
Gheorghe Ursu was also a writer, the travel book written by him being published posthumously in 1991.
The life of Gheorghe Ursu became the subject of a film directed by Cornel Mihalache, which premiered in Sibiu on the occasion of the Sibiu – European Cultural Capital event. The film also contains recordings of Gheorghe Ursu’s voice.
The prosecutors systematically rejected, until 2014, the criminal complaints of Ursu’s son, arguing either that the crime does not exist, or that the act – qualified murder or crimes against humanity – has expired.
Andrei Ursu presented the statements given by his father’s cellmates, testimonies of the guards of the cell where Gheorghe Ursu was imprisoned, his medical records from Jilava, as well as the statements of several doctors from Jilava, including the doctor who operated on Gheorghe Ursu, from which it is “very clear” that the injuries that caused Gheorghe Ursu’s death were done during the interrogation taken by security major Marin Pîrvulescu.
The re-opening of the criminal investigation in the files regarding the death of Gheorghe Ursu was confirmed, on November 12, 2014, by the Bucharest Military Court of Appeal, which found the legality and validity of this measure, after the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court rejected the solutions of not sending to court in this case .
Gheorghe Ursu’s son, Andrei Ursu, was on hunger strike for 17 days, in October and November 2014, in protest against the fact that the file regarding his father’s death is not reopened, and the Securitate officer, Marin Pîrvulescu, who coordinated the investigation that targeted him, he is not charged.
So far, three people have been convicted for the death of Gheorghe Ursu: Marian Clită, former cellmate of Gheorghe Ursu, Tudor Stănică, former head of the Criminal Investigations Department, and Mihail Creangă, former head of the Capital Militia Detention Center.
At the beginning of January 2015, the military prosecutors announced that the former security major Marin Pîrvulescu is being prosecuted for crimes against humanity, in the file regarding the death of the dissident Gheorghe Ursu.
On August 1, 2016, George Homoştean (deceased), former Minister of the Interior, and Tudor Postelnicu, former head of the State Security Department, were sent to court by military prosecutors for complicity in the commission of crimes against humanity in the case of the dissident Gheorghe Ursu. Postelnicu died on August 12, 2017. At the same time, former security officers Marin Pîrvulescu and Vasile Hodiş, who tortured Gheorghe Ursu, were also sent to court, being accused of crimes against humanity.
On October 17, 2019, the Bucharest Court of Appeal decided to change the legal status in the case of the former officers of the 6th Directorate of Criminal Investigations of the State Security Department, Marin Pârvulescu and Vasile Hodiş, from crimes against humanity to inhumane treatment and acquitted them for this crime.
In July 2023, former security officers Marin Pârvulescu and Vasile Hodiş were definitively acquitted by the High Court of Cassation and Justice. In November this year, the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice ordered the review of the acquittal decision. The magistrates requested a retrial and sentencing of the former officers for inhumane treatment.
Find out presents the main historical meanings of November 17:
1494 – The Italian humanist of Latin expression Giovani Pico della Mirandola, a member of the Platonic Academy in Florence (“On the dignity of man”) (b. February 24, 1463), passed away.
1538 – The first documentary attestation of the Caracal settlement, contained in the act issued by the chancellery of Radu Vodă Paisie.
1558 – Queen Maria Tudor, known as “Bloody Mary” – passed away for the persecutions she subjected Protestants to (b. February 18, 1516).
1869 – The Suez Canal, which connects the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, is inaugurated in Egypt.
1906 – Soichiro Honda, engineer, founder of the “Honda” motorcycle company, was born (d. August 5, 1991)
1917 – The French sculptor Auguste Rodin (b. 1840) passed away.
1926 – IPS Antonie Plămădeală, Metropolitan of Transylvania, Crisana and Maramureș, one of the great contemporary ecumenists, prose writer and essayist (the novel “Three Hours in Hell”) was born (d. August 29, 2005).
1984 – The actor Constantin Rauţchi passed away (the films “Bădăranii”, “Ciprian Porumbescu”) (b. 22 May 1934)
1989 – The Velvet Revolution begins in Czechoslovakia: a peaceful demonstration of students is repressed by law enforcement.
1992 – The initialing of the European Association Agreement between the EEC and Romania took place in Brussels. Romania was the fourth country in Eastern Europe, after Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, to obtain associate status with the EEC.
2000 – Peru: President Alberto Fujimori is removed from leadership.
2006 – The world-famous Hungarian footballer Ferenc Puskas (b. April 2, 1927) died
2006 – George W. Bush’s first visit to Vietnam.
2007 – The Founding Council of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) adopted the new World Anti-Doping Code at the Madrid Conference.
Source: www.descopera.ro
