Romania Detains Police Officers Over Suspect’s Asphyxiation Death

A court in the town of Pitesti, 120 kilometres north-west of Bucharest, has remanded two policemen accused of culpable homicide in custody for 30 days after they were charged with causing the death of a man they allegedly mistreated, Romanian media reported on Tuesday.

The incident occurred in Pitesti on Friday, when the officers evacuated a bar terrace near the bus station due to a fire. According to local media, the 63-year-old victim, who was drunk at the time, refused to leave, which led to a verbal confrontation with the police officers.

At some point, one of the officers hauled the man onto the floor, as shown in a video of the incident published by Romanian media. Almost immediately, the man suffered a respiratory shock that ended up causing his death.

"The immediate cause of death was mechanical asphyxia," forensic services have concluded. This was caused by the "compression of the soft part of the throat and the thorax", a medical report said.

The autopsy, which confirmed that the man had consumed a lot of alcohol, described the man's death as "violent" and said it was probably the consequence of "a fall and an impact".

Interior Minister Lucian Bode, said that "those who are guilty will pay for it", and warned against blaming the Romanian police as a whole for the tragedy.

Romanian police have been involved in at least another two incidents of brutality in recent months. On March 5, a tribunal ordered the arrest of three police officers for allegedly detaining and torturing two men who had reproached them for not wearing a mask in September 2020.

The two men died last month. According to Romanian media, one of them died of cancer, while a drug overdose was the suspected cause of the second death.

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