Former Romanian PM Petre Roman to be kept under prosecution for crimes against humanity, court rules

Prosecutors of the High Court of Cassation and Justice have ruled to extend prosecution of former Romanian PM Petre Roman in the case investigating the Romanian 1989 Revolution under allegations of crimes against humanity.

According to a press release by the court, Petre Roman has been one of the important decision-makers within the Council of the National Salvation Front (CFSN) since its creation, similar to suspects Ion Iliescu and Gelu Voican Voiculescu, and has accepted and formalized military decisions, some of them which were aimed at misinformation.

“The misinformation decisions were of a general nature, targeting all major urban centers of Romania. These have been materialized by: the deployment of military (heterogeneous, including from the point of view of military command), fully equipped with combat, including heavy weapons, willingly without effective coordination, within the country’s large urban agglomerations; giving orders for the movement of some military units at night without providing the necessary communication with the other military units already in the field; the repeated request through TVR that the partially armed civilian population should actively participate in the defense of important urban objectives,” the statement said.

Military prosecutors argue that these actions have taken place against the backdrop of generalized mood of psychosis induced among the public by repeatedly spreading false information about hostile, intense and diversified actions belonging to the “terrorist enemy.” The information was disseminated through military and civil communications, the source quoted added.

“These behaviors have contributed to the occurrence of particularly serious consequences (numerous loss of life, physical, physical or psychological injuries, serious deprivation of liberty in violation of the general rules of international law of persons, great suffering, destruction of patrimony goods )”, the court says.