Romanian former secret police chief to face trial

Four former communist officials in Romania, including the head of the hated secret police and the then interior minister, will go on trial over the 1985 death of a dissident, prosecutors said Monday.
Tudor Postelnicu, 84, who headed the Securitate until dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime fell in 1989, and George Homostean, 92, have been charged with crimes against humanity.
They are accused of authorizing the September 1985 arrest and abuse of poet and engineer Gheorghe Ursu and covering up the real causes of his subsequent death.
Ursu, denounced by an informer for anti-government comments in his private diary, died after being beaten and tortured by investigators and fellow prisoners on orders of the Securitate.
Two former Securitate officers will also stand trial, prosecutors said, calling it an “important step” in bringing communist era crimes to light. No date was set for the trial.
In 2003 two lower-ranking Securitate officers were found guilty of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison, but Ursu’s son has campaigned for years for their superiors to face justice too.
The announcement came on the same day as researchers said they had found the remains of nine more people near the site of a former camp for political prisoners in Periprava in south-east Romania.
This brought to 20 the number of skeletons found there since 2013, said archaeologist Gheorghe Petrov. They were in “unmarked graves” and appear to have been buried “without clothes,” he said.
More than 600,000 Romanians were imprisoned for political reasons under Romania’s communist regime, one of the most brutal in Soviet-controlled eastern and central Europe.

Source: Arab News