Romania opens Ceausescu execution spot to public

The military base where brutal Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were executed in 1989 has been restored and will open to the public in September, local media reported Saturday. "Visitors will be able to see the wall where the Ceausescus were shot," Ovidiu Carstina, the director of the museum site at Targoviste in central Romania, told the Mediafax news agency. "The inside of the building has been repainted in the same colours as in 1989, the furniture will be the same. We are recreating both the room where the trial took place and the bedroom where they spent their last night," he said. Authorities decided to open up the base after interest from foreign tourists in seeing the spot where the dictator died, Mediafax said. On December 22, 1989, as angry crowds gathered in front of the Communist Party headquarters, the Ceausescus fled the capital Bucharest in a helicopter, but were stopped by the army. After a three-day trial by a special military tribunal, the couple were sentenced to death by firing squad.