Prosecutor general Alex Florenta asks president Klaus Iohannis’s opinion on starting the criminal prosecution of Ion Iliescu in the June 1990 Mineriad (the miners’ riot) file, judicial sources told AGERPRES.

Initially, in June 2017, former president Ion Iliescu was sent to trial for crimes against humanity, along with former prime minister Petre Roman and former SRI director Virgil Magureanu, 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 annul all the evidence collected by the prosecutors, having found the illegality of the indictment by which Ion Iliescu was sent to trial, together with Petre Roman, Gelu Voican Voiculescu, Virgil Magureanu, general (res.) Mugurel Cristian Florescu, admiral (res.) Emil „Cico” Dumitrescu, Cazimir Ionescu, Adrian Sarbu and Miron Cozma.

Practically, the prosecutors have to redo the entire procedure, including asking for the head of state’s opinion for the indictment of Ion Iliescu.

The military prosecutors argued that, on June 11 and 12, 1990, the state authorities decided to launch a violent attack against the demonstrators in the University Square in Bucharest, who were campaigning mainly for the adoption of point 8 of the Timisoara Proclamation and expressing themselves, in peaceful way, political opinions, in contradiction with those of the majority that formed the political power at that time.

In this attack, forces of the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of National Defense (MApN), the Romanian Inteligence Service (SRI), as well as over 10,000 miners and other workers from several areas of the country would have been illegally involved.

According to the Military Prosecutor’s Office, the attack was carried out in the morning of June 13, 1990, with the following consequences: the death by shooting of four people, the injury to the physical or mental integrity of a total number of 1,388 people, the deprivation of the fundamental right to freedom, for political reasons, of a total number of 1,250 people.

As part of this action, more than 200 people were picked up and transported to a military unit of the Ministry of the Interior in Magurele, where they were detained until the afternoon of the same day, when they were allowed to leave, after a brief investigation.

The former president Ion Iliescu was accused by the military prosecutors of being the one who gave the order for the forced evacuation of the demonstrators from the University Square, including by using some workers from the big enterprises in Bucharest.

AGERPRES