Romania Arrests Policeman Over Death Threats to Journalist

Romanian law enforcement officers and prosecutors on Wednesday raided the national Police Academy in search of an officer who allegedly threatened an investigative journalist with death.

Emilia Sercan, who is well known for her investigations into plagiarism involving the PhD theses of various ministers, politicians, and officials, including senior army and police officers, on April 17 said that she had filed a complaint with the police after she received death threats from an unknown person.

"The person who threatened me with death has been identified," she wrote on Facebook on Wednesday. "He is a police officer, an employee of the Police Academy. I'm obviously shocked," she added.

Police and judicial sources also confirmed it to BIRN and other media.

Sercan noted that her research in recent weeks had focused on plagiarism at the Police Academy.

The media watchdog Reporters without Borders and the Romanian media freedom NGO ActiveWatch sent an open letter on Wednesday to Interior Minister Carmen Dan and Police Chief Ioan Buda, demanding an investigation into the allegations.

"It seems obvious that her work is the reason for these death threats and that the people who threaten her wish to intimidate her in order to stop her journalistic investigations," the letter said.

"We will hold the Romanian authorities responsible for not acting and not immediately taking proper measures to protect the journalist," it added.

Sercan, 42, writes for PressOne and teaches at the Bucharest-based School of Journalism and Communication Sciences. Her Ph.D. thesis on censorship during the communist era was published in 2015.