TT Business Intelligence Report
Vol. 2, No. 51, 24 July 2003
Business Intelligence, Crime, Corruption and Debt in C&E/SE Europe and the FSU

SECURITATE KILLERS FLEE JUSTICE

Two former high-ranking police officers are on the run after being sentenced to 22 years in prison each for the 1985 beating death of dissident Gheorghe Ursu. The two men’s escape from justice, short-lived though it may turn out to be, only serves to underline the erratic progress in recent years toward coming to terms with the activities of the communist security forces, especially the Securitate secret police. Police issued a national arrest warrant for the two and warned border guards not to let them leave the country. The men fled their homes in Bucharest before police arrived to take them to prison. Bucharest police chief Marian Tutilescu said on 18 July that the two, Tudor Stanica and Mihail Creanga, were thought to be still on Romanian soil and traveling together. On 21 July police spokesman Ionel Voiculescu confirmed that the two were still at large. In 14 July a Bucharest court found the two men, both former officers in the regular police, guilty of the murder of Ursu, a dissident who fell foul of the authorities for keeping a diary critical of the regime. Ursu never attempted to publish it, but friends and colleagues who knew of the diary informed police. Ursu died in police custody. (TOL 21.vii.03)