Gheorghe Ursu died on November 17, 1985 in the Jilava Penitentiary Hospital after nearly two months of investigation in police custody. He was detained on September 21 under the pretext of investigating the facts of keeping the currency of several countries equivalent to 18.5 dollars. Perhaps it is more difficult to understand how a person’s death can tell something to society and reveal various aspects of his past after more than 30 years. Therefore, for a clearer idea of ​​the outcome of history, we must have a general picture of Gheorghe Ursu’s dissidence. [1].

Simona Deleanu is a doctor of history at the University of Bucharest, defended her thesis “Resistance through culture – a post-revolutionary dispute”.

A civil engineer specializing in seismic strengthening, a poet and writer in his spare time, Ursu became an increasingly vocal critic of the regime after the mid-1970s. Starting in 1944, he constantly kept an intimate diary in which he recorded details of his private life, chronicles of films and classical music performances, as well as other observations. At the time of the earthquake of March 4, 1977, Ursu was already an engineer with more than 25 years of experience, which also recommended him for the consolidation teams created in Bucharest, assigned to inspect and take the necessary measures in the case of buildings. were affected by the earthquake. Thus, he becomes responsible for the Patria quarter in the center of the city and participates in meetings of engineers and party leaders, where he reveals one by one Nicolae Ceausescu’s plans for the reorganization of the capital. Faced with a ban on further consolidation, the country’s president announces in a secret meeting just four months after the July 4 earthquake[2]Gheorghe Ursu notes that the order was criminal and all resources will be redirected to the new project “Perspektiva” – a new center on Arsenal Hill. The engineers present at the meeting were threatened with imprisonment if the fortification work continued, and by August 23, the houses had experienced not only the filling of cracked walls and plaster. Finding himself in a situation where he could no longer practice his profession, the engineer decided to draw attention to the criminal order by writing and sending a large letter to Free Europe, which he managed to personally deliver to Virgil Yerunzi in Paris in 1978. A letter from was read in Europa Liberă on the day two years after the earthquake, submitted as a letter from a Romanian architect. Security did not manage to identify the author. The political situation in the country increasingly displeased Gheorghe Ursu. Being a relative or friend of such writers as Nina Kasiyan, Geo Bogza, Jordan Chimet or Radu Kosasu, the engineer has been following the Congress of the Union of Writers since 1981, hoping that they will set an example to the population. Later, he decides to send a letter to the same radio station, but this time to Monica Lovinescu. Before the denunciation in December 1984, the engineer was under the surveillance of the security service, but did not arouse much suspicion. But after the denunciation will start the whole mechanism and in the course of two searches, almost all the notebooks that made up the diary for more than 40 years, as well as other materials, will be seized, the Guard will gradually find out who is the author of the letter to Free Europe. While under investigation in a state of freedom for five months on charges of propaganda against the socialist regime, Gheorghe Ursu reported periodically to the Securitate from January to the end of May 1985 and wrote statements explaining his actions and diary entries, as deciphered by investigators. his notes. However, he refuses to nominate other people from his entourage, including writers who are under the surveillance of the Security Council, about whom he is being interrogated. At the same time, a case is being created about operations with prohibited means of payment based on the fact of confiscation of currency left over from trips from Western Europe. After the Security established that the diary in which she slanders the party-state leadership is not valid evidence in court, and she failed to find out information about other people during interrogations, she builds a screen. The investigation was officially terminated by the ruling on refusal to proceed with criminal proceedings. At a meeting at the Design Institute, where he worked, Ursa was criticized and forced to self-criticize, assuring that the investigation was over.

Arrested on the morning of September 21 and taken to the custody of the General Inspectorate of Police, Gheorghe Ursu was simultaneously under investigation both by this and by the Security Service through the same officers. The dissident is cut off from all contact with the outside world, his family is not informed of his arrest and is not allowed to visit him. Later, the employment contract with him was terminated, and on October 19, the preventive measure was extended for another 30 days. Systematically interrogated in a violent manner, placed in a cell with prisoners with a special status, whose goal was to obtain information about him in turn, the engineer does not give in, even at the risk of his own life. As a result of a new brutal interrogation on November 15, his health deteriorates, but only two days later he is taken to a correctional hospital. Gheorghe Ursu dies after undergoing surgery at the age of 59, and the family is not informed until a few days later.

Immediately after the December 1989 revolution, Gheorghe Ursu’s family begins to find out what really happened and who is responsible for his death. Since Sorana’s wife and two children, Andriy and Olga, were in the United States, the dissident’s sister Georgeta Berdan was the first to start the case. Already in January 1990, the investigation under the leadership of Dan Voinei begins promisingly. The proceedings reveal the cover-up of the violent death, as well as the fact that security operatives have been coordinating the investigation since IGM’s arrest and are responsible for the engineer’s death.

In the post-communist decades, suspended and delayed investigations have identified several culprits in the death of Gheorghe Ursu, but systematically bypassed those most responsible. Thus, the first convict to assume more responsibility than he actually had was Marian Clite, one of the cellmates placed there to observe and torture Ursu. Sent to trial in 1996, Klita was sentenced four years later to 20 years in prison, of which he served only two. In late 2000, prosecutor Dan Voinea brought to trial former police officers Tudor Stenica and Mihai Kreange, who were later convicted of murder. But the main responsibility for this violent death lies with the security forces. The investigation into their case, which was conducted since the beginning of the 2000s, then blocked and delayed, is being resumed after the sharp protest of Andrii Ursu, who announced a hunger strike. In the fall of 2014, under the signature of the Prosecutor General Tiberiu Nitzu, the investigation was renewed under the category of crimes against humanity, so the facts are not subject to the statute of limitations. Thus, in the summer of 2016, the former Minister of the Interior Gheorghe Homostean, the former head of the security service Tudor Postelniku and the main officers responsible for the investigation of the dissident during 1985, Marin Pirvulescu and Vasile Hodis, went to court. The only responsible person who was not in the case was General Julian Vlad, who was supposed to be the subject of a new case, but he also died before reaching the court.

The case goes to the High Court of Cassation and Justice, but is later dismissed to the Court of Appeal in Bucharest after Homostean’s death in late 2016. From March 2017 to June 2019, they are heard as former witnesses in court. appellate dissidents, guards of the IGM pretrial detention center, and in support of the defendants – former security forces. Two defendants [3]- Marin Pirvulescu and Vasile Hodis (Tudor Postelniku died in August 2017) appear in court with the image of two pensioners, not former security officers. Institutional solidarity arises whenever one of the witnesses is a former colleague from the same structure, regardless of how little or how much his involvement in the case was.

In October 2019, Judge Michaela Nice of the Bucharest Court of Appeal announced the court’s decision, namely the acquittal of the two, despite the prosecutor asking for 25 years in prison. The trial, which began as a result of an appeal filed by the civil parties, Sorana, Andrii and Olga, resumed in May 2020 at the High Court of Cassation and Justice and will conclude on 4 July 2023, when a three-judge panel will rule [4].

In this way, we will witness the end of more than three decades of post-communist transition, during which the relatives of the dissident Gheorghe Ursu tried in every possible way to give him justice and bring to justice those responsible for his untimely death. On the other hand, as a result of the inclusion of this dossier in the so-called trial against communism, for the first time two former officers of the Romanian political police are being tried for crimes against humanity. From this point of view, the legal approach and especially the potential conviction will turn this process into a benchmark both for transitional criminal justice in Romania and for the judicial system for which it will become a precedent.

On the other hand, taking as a guide the reasoning of the Bucharest Court of Appeal regarding the acquittal of the two security officers, but especially the conclusions that the court makes regarding the quality of a dissident or opponent of the communist regime, noting in particular that Gheorghe Ursu was not a dissident, it can be said that due to the decision on conviction of the officers responsible for his death, the engineer can restore, from the court’s point of view, the quality of a dissident. And, as noted in the reasoning of the Court: “It is true that in the 1980s information surveillance, surveillance, wiretapping of telephone conversations and correspondence, investigation and arrest for crimes under the jurisdiction of security agencies, placement under house arrest, sometimes even physical violence was used, but no other security personnel involved in this manner has been prosecuted for crimes similar to those in this case.”

The family’s efforts over 33 years, through four trials, resulted in the partial recovery through CNSAS of the “Udrea” tracking file and the criminal case. Others, namely the operational equipment (OT) file, which contained the results of wiretapping, correspondence, etc., and especially the entries from Gheorghe Ursu’s diary, were destroyed.

Those who witnessed this latest trial in the courtroom of the appeals court, or ICCJ, could see more than the balance between defendants and civilians in the hours-long hearing. It was rather a process of communism-post-communism, when former security forces exchange contemporary views, if necessary, even smear the memory of the deceased, and the descendants of the victim put forward a version on the side of justice. – Read the entire article and comment on Contributors.ro