10 February 2016

PRESS RELEASE

The Public Information and Media Relations Office within the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice is authorized to bring to public knowledge the following:

The High Court of Cassation and Justice – Criminal Section ordered, on February 10^th 2016, the dismissal of the appeals filed by the parties and maintained the decision of the Bucharest Court of Appeal in relation to the conviction of the defendant VIŞINESCU ALEXANDRU to 20 years of prison time for having committed crimes against humanity.

The decision stays final and it is the first of the kind that has ever been delivered by a court of law in this matter.

The case was built up by the prosecutors of the Section of Criminal Investigation and Criminalistics within the Prosecutor’s Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice who, for the first time ever, decided, by way of the bill of indictment dated June 16^th 2014, to send a person to trial for crimes against humanity, taking into consideration occurrences dating back to the communist era, the case file being opened as a result of the notification filed by the Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile.

         In the bill of indictment prepared, the prosecutors have held the following factual situation:

         During 1956 – 1963, the defendant, in his quality as commander of the  Penitentiary Ramnicu Sarat, has committed systematic actions and omissions, which had as result the persecution of the collectivity representing the  political inmates incarcerated in this penitentiary, by depriving them of   fundamental human rights or by serious restraint of the exercise of the same, for political  reasons.  Thus, the inmates  were exposed to  such existence or treatment conditions, as to led them to their physical destruction, without being assured for them a minimum of medication and  without being  granted to them  adequate medical care and nursing. At the same time, the untreatment of the patients, the refusal of their transfer to the penitentiary hospitals, the degradation of the health condition of the convicts by lack of food, lack of  heating, the punishments applied discretionary and abusive, the inhuman detention conditions, the bad treatments, the beatings and other violence, the ignorance of the letters and  notifications formulated by the inmates were as all actions intended to lead to the physical extermination of the incarcerated persons.

         The main  categories of inmates existing in the penitentiary,  as results exactly from a note of the defendant to the Security Council of the State from the year 1967, were:  former leaders in the bourgeois-landowner  government and in the leaderships of the  National Peasant Party and National Liberal Party, former leaders of  different subversive organizations, former leading staff after 23 August 1944, former  staff of the  Ministry for Home Affairs after 23 August 1944, former leaders of different religious sects, other more isolated cases.

         The living conditions within the  Penitentiary Ramnicu Sarat, as results from the documents and as described by the former inmates, have created the premises for  occurrence of some extremely sever affections, resulting in  few  cases of death, probing the nature of abusive and neglectful treatment applied by the prison commander lieutenant colonel (r) Visinescu Alexandru.

         The  imposed regime has not at all assured the  minim surviving conditions on long-term, having in view that  the mostly the  sentences extended over a period which exceeded 10 years. The death of the inmates occurred, thus,  following a lent but efficient process, by which  they where physically and psychically tortured.

         Until present, from the studied documents, has been identified 138 inmates which passed through the Penitentiary Ramnicu Sarat during the mandate of Visinescu Alexandru.

         It has to be mentioned also the fact that the regulations on the matter of detention conditions which were in force in that period, formed only the premises for the organization of the extermination regime in the prisons and labor colonies, or covered it in an official form, while the concrete measures taken for the annihilation of the political prisoners were left in the care the prison’ commanders and amended only by orders and informal recommendations which came   from the party.

         Practically, the organization and the operation of the extermination regime, unable to be settled by official documents, depended on the efficiency and inventiveness of the prison’ commanders, but also on their obedience shown   to the party.

         The distribution at the leadership of the prisons was done by taking into account the quality of the political inmates and the interest of the Party for their quick elimination. It is noted that within the Penitentiary Ramnicu Sarat were incarcerated mainly personalities of the political life, leaders of historical parties, fact that determined the necessity of designation of a prison trustful commander experienced in reeducation. Thus is explained the extreme hardness of the commander Alexandru Visinescu and disturbing results obtained in the extermination process drafted by him.