Three of the policemen accused of torture, in preventive custody

The Bucharest Court has ordered the preventive custody of three of the policemen from the 16th Police Station in Bucharest accused of beating two young people in September last year. Three other policemen were placed under judicial control for a period of 60 days, and no precautionary measures were taken against one. In this case, the prosecutors of Bucharest Prosecutor's Office charged 9 police officers with the crimes of illegal deprivation of liberty and torture. In September 2020, two young people reported that they had been beaten by police in the Eroii Revolutiei (Revolution Heroes) area in Bucharest, after telling the policemen that they were not wearing a protective mask and were giving unjustified fines. One of the young men said that the policemen put handcuffs on his hands and hit him with batons, with fists and legs, after which they put him in a police van and took him to a field near Jilava, where he was allegedly tortured. Prosecutors say that, on September 1, 2020, around 1.45 am, the 16th Police Station officers organized a filter in the area of Calea Serban Voda Street in Bucharest, a context in which they were approached by the two young men, who addressed them reproaches for not wearing protective masks. "Under these circumstances, in order to punish one of the injured persons for the reproaches addressed, 7 of the defendants, having on them the armament provided, illegally deprived him of liberty, handcuffing him and took him against his will on a plot of land located on the outskirts of Bucharest, Sector 4, where 5 of them exercised for about 30 minutes physical violence on the victim, applying repeated blows (...) during which time the other two police officers passively witnessed the violence perpetrated on the injured person. After these violence deeds, the victim was abandoned on the vacant land," say the prosecutors. At the same time, two other policemen handcuffed the other young man and locked him in a police van and then transported him to the Zetari area of Bucharest, Sector 5, where they abandoned him on a dark street. AGERPRES (RO - author: Eusebi Manolache, editor: Florin Marin; EN - author: Bogdan Gabaroi; editor: Adina Panaitescu)