The High Court of Cassation and Justice ordered on Thursday the final acquittal of former (secret police) Securitate officers Marin Pirvulescu and Vasile Hodi, accused of torturing dissident Gheorghe Ursu, for the crime of inhuman treatment, write Agerpres.

The Supreme Court rejected as unfounded the appeals filed by prosecutors and Andrei Ursu, Gheorghe Ursu’s son, and upheld the acquittal decision handed down in October 2019 by the Bucharest Court of Appeal.

Marin Pirvulescu and Vasile Hodis were sent to trial by prosecutors for crimes against humanity, but Judge Mihaela Nita of the Bucharest Court of Appeal changed the classification of the deeds to the crime of inhuman treatment, on the grounds that the Criminal Code of 1968 is the more favourable law.

In the same case, Tudor Postelnicu (deceased), former head of the State Securitate Department, was acquitted of complicity in inhuman treatment.

Construction engineer, poet and writer Gheorghe Ursu was brutally investigated by Securitate in the 80s, for sending letters to Radio Free Europe and for keeping a diary in which he wrote down the horrors of the communist leadership.

According to the prosecutors, between January and November 1985, dissident Gheorghe Ursu was the subject of informative and judicial investigation for acts or activities considered hostile to the communist regime. He was arrested on September 21, 1985 and died on November 17, 1985 in the Jilava Penitentiary Hospital.

The military prosecutors established that Marin Parvulescu and Vasile Hodis carried out repressive and systematic actions (stakeout, surveillance, searches, systematic hearings, acts of physical and mental violence) on Gheorghe Ursu, actions which „resulted in serious physical or mental suffering and were likely to cause serious harm to his fundamental rights and freedoms, in particular the right to life”.

The dissident’s son, Andrei Ursu, maintains that it was Mihai Pirvulescu who first investigated Gheorghe Ursu while in liberty. Because the latter refused to denounce his friends, including well-known writers Nina Cassian, Geo Bogza and Radu Cosasu, the Securitate decided to „continue the investigations under arrest”, „following which the nature of his relations with them will be clarified”.

In an attempt to avoid a case of political persecution that would have been unfavourable to the Ceausescu regime at international level, the Securitate framed Gheorghe Ursu for possession of 17 US dollars, for which they arrested him on 21 September 1985. He was locked in a cell with two common law prisoners, Marian Clita and Gheorghe Radu, who were ordered by the Securitate to use violence against him.

Engineer Gheorghe Ursu died as a result of beatings by Marin Pirvulescu and other Securitate officers, as well as assaults by common law prisoners.

So far, three people have been convicted in this case: Colonel (r) Tudor Stanica, then head of the Militia (the police force of Communist Romania – ed.n.) in Bucharest, his deputy Colonel (r) Mihai Creanga, and Marin Clita, the dissident’s cellmate.

Tudor Stanica did not serve a single day in prison for medical reasons, Mihai Creanga escaped after ten years and common law prisoner Marin Clita was released after nine years for good behaviour. Clita is currently back in prison, serving a 14-year sentence in Denmark for murdering a stewardess in a Copenhagen hotel room.