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DIICOT reopens investigation into Gendarmerie chiefs in August 10 case
The Chief Prosecutor of the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT), Giorgiana Hosu, partially overturned on Tuesday the solution to close the August 10 court case and ordered the reopening of the criminal investigation into the former chiefs of the Gendarmerie.
By this decision, the criminal investigation against Colonel Gheorghe Sebastian Cucos, former First Deputy of the Romanian Gendarmerie; Major Laurentiu Cazan, former general director of the General Directorate of Gendarmes of the Municipality of Bucharest; Colonel Catalin Sindile, former chief of the Romanian Gendarmerie; Chief Police Commissioner Mihai Dan Chirica, former Secretary of State for Relations with Prefects of the Ministry of Interior, was reopened.
The head of DIICOT admitted the complaints made by several petitioners against the closing ordinance and decided to reopen the criminal investigation of Sebastian Cucos, Laurentiu Cazan, Catalin Sindile and Mihai Dan Chirica for abuse of office, abusive conduct, participation in the use of forgery, complicity in abuse of office and complicity in participation in abusive conduct.
The case will also be reopened for the offences of favoring the perpetrator, intellectual forgery and use of forgery. On the other hand, the Chief Prosecutor of DIICOT upheld the closing solution regarding a coup attempt. If this decision to partially reopen the investigation is approved by a judge from the Bucharest Court of Appeal, the case will be directed to the Military Prosecutor's Office.
The decision of the DIICOT leadership comes after more than 57,000 citizens signed a petition launched by the Declic Community, calling on General Prosecutor Gabriela Scutea to reopen the August 10 case and to investigate those who gave instructions "to assault and gas the peaceful protesters".
In fact, the ordinance to close the August 10 case was harshly criticized by the representatives of the civil society, but also by the people who participated in the protest in Victoriei Square.
In the closing ordinance, DIICOT claimed that there was a moral complicity of the peaceful protesters in Victoriei Square, who did not distance themselves from those who exerted violence on the law enforcement officers, but were actually amused.
Moreover, DIICOT says that not all "collateral victims" of the violence in Victoriei Square were also "innocent victims".
The prosecutors show that the attempts of the gendarmes to extract from the crowd the violent protesters failed, especially due to the attitude of peaceful protesters.
DIICOT also said that despite repeated appeals addressed to peaceful protesters to distance themselves from persons manifesting violently, the former "were amused" by the violence exerted on law enforcement officers.
Prosecutors state that, throughout the entirety of the events on August 10 and in the night between August 10/11, the gendarmes proceeded, "where and when such an intervention presented guarantees of safety for their own personnel and the perspective of minimum effect on other participants in the protest," to extracting from the crowd the persons identified as having a violent behavior, but "the said type of intervention did not enjoy support even from the protesters assumed as being peaceful, their reactions (cursing, booing, threatening gestures, etc.) accompanying the actions of those who by violent manifestations were endangering not only the bodily integrity of law enforcement officers, but, in equal measure, were endangering the other participants in the protest."
The DIICOT document also analyzed concepts such as "moral complicity", "collateral victims" and "innocent victims", in order to describe the attitude of the peaceful protesters, who did not cooperate with the police.
Chairman of the National Liberal Party, Prime Minister Ludovic Orban, welcomes the decision of the management of the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) to reverse the closing of the "August 10" protest rally case, stating that the prosecutors and judges have a "moral and legal obligation" to find out and present the truth.
The Prime Minister considers that the truth about the incidents of August 10, 2018 in Victoriei Square must be established in court, ie by a court invested with this right, therefore he appreciates the decision to continue the investigation, a release reads.
"It is inadmissible that almost two years after the violent events in Victoriei Square, the Romanians have not yet found out the truth about the persons in charge who coordinated and ordered the repression of a rally that had begun peacefully. The Romanian citizens and the judiciary don't need yet another case with the same fate as the miners' rampage and the 1989 Revolution cases. The prosecutors and judges have a moral and legal obligation to find out and present the truth. Justice must be done to the thousands of people who have suffered following those incidents and the citizens have the right to know exactly on whose order they have been gassed and beaten on August 10, 2018," Orban underlines.
According to the cited source, the declassification of the report on the events of August 10, 2018 has been one of the priorities of the Ludovic Orban Government since its coming to rule.
"The Ministry of the Interior has carried out this task, given that the representatives of the previous government kept the report classified, although the investigators repeatedly requested the declassification of the information. Moreover, steps have been taken to declassify the discussions of the gendarmes via radio communication on the two days - August 10 and 11. The brutal repression of a peaceful demonstration by the police must not go unpunished," the release states.