The Mineriada file: a blow of proportions. The decision of the Prosecutor’s Office

Ion Iliescu, the former president of Romania, and Petre Roman, the former prime minister, were indicted on Wednesday by the General Prosecutor’s Office for crimes against humanity in connection with the events during the Mineriada of June 13-15, 1990. The prosecutors claim that the two constituted ” a criminal group of a systemic type” and had an active role in organizing and carrying out the actions that led to the violent repression of the protests of that period.

During that period, Ion Iliescu was in charge of Romania as president and president of the Provisional Council of National Union, and Petre Roman was prime minister of the Provisional Government. The events during the Mineriada were marked by violence and repression against demonstrators who opposed the government, and this file was reopened by prosecutors to investigate the legal responsibilities of those involved in these actions.

This is an important step in the investigation of some controversial events in the post-revolutionary history of Romania, and the indictment of former political figures represents a significant moment in the process of legal responsibility for the abuses committed during that period.

“They launched a policy of repression against the civilian population in the capital”

The prosecutors describe the facts for which Iliescu and Roman are being prosecuted:

• “In June 1990, people with decision-making positions in the Romanian state at that time launched a policy of repression against the civilian population in the capital, as a result of which 4 people were killed, 2 people were raped, their physical integrity was damaged and/ or mental health of over 1,300 people and over 1,200 people were persecuted through the illegal deprivation of liberty.
• Starting on April 22, 1990, a demonstration took place in the University Square in the city of Bucharest, which lasted for several weeks, until June 13, 1990. The demonstration had the character of opposition to the power newly established in Romania after the Revolution of 1989, the demonstrators requesting verbally, through communiques and other forms of protest, the break with the communist regime barely replaced in December 1989, the promotion of people who do not they had a background as a party activist, the establishment of a free television and other such claims of democratic origin.
• In this context, Iliescu Ion, Roman Petre and other people from the leadership of the state or the National Salvation Front launched an attack against the demonstrators who were physically located in the University Square, which was in fact a pretext intended to mask the repressive action against the people who had previously participated in these demonstrations, especially the opinion leaders, as well as against any person who showed or was likely to show a form of opposition, especially students, intellectuals or people who expressed closeness to Western values”.

The prosecutors also talk about the establishment of a “systemic, heterogeneous, political, administrative, military and civil criminal group”:

• Considering the scale of the attack, its implementation required the involvement of a very large number of people. In this sense, people from the state leadership would have constituted, according to the administered evidence, a systemic, heterogeneous criminal group of a political, administrative, military and civil nature, within which a large number of people were involved, with a contribution of different nature and content to facts produced on an impressive scale.
• In the criminal picture, the persons who physically carried out the acts of a criminal nature occupied a lower position in the hierarchy of the group, but the conception and orchestration of the commission of the crimes belonged to the political leadership of the Romanian state from that moment, through the persons mentioned.

The Mineriada file, sent to court in 2017, canceled by the court and restarted from scratch by prosecutors

The prosecutors must redo the investigation, after the evidence gathered by the investigators was annulled in court.

Initially, in June 2017, former president Ion Iliescu was sent to court for crimes against humanity, along with former prime minister Petre Roman and former SRI director Virgil Măgureanu, but in December 2020, the High Court of Cassation and Justice decided to return the file to the Prosecutor’s Office Military, for rebuilding the investigation from scratch.

The judges then decided to cancel all the evidence gathered by the prosecutors, having found the illegality of the indictment by which Ion Iliescu was sent to court, along with Petre Roman, Gelu Voican Voiculescu, Virgil Măgureanu, general (res.) Mugurel Cristian Florescu, admiral (res. ) Emil “Cico” Dumitrescu (deceased in the meantime), Cazimir Ionescu, Adrian Sârbu and Miron Cozma.