Fmr Gendarmerie heads prosecuted in connection with 10 August criminal file

Former heads of the Gendarmerie were sent to trial by the prosecutors of the Military Section of the General Prosecutor's Office in the file regarding the protest of 10 August 2018, 312 injured persons becoming civil parties in the process, according to a press release from the General Prosecutor's Office.

It is about colonel (r) Gheorghe Sebastian Cucos, former head of the Romanian Gendarmerie, colonel Laurentiu Cazan, former deputy general director of the Bucharest Gendarmerie, currently an officer within the Gendarmerie and colonel Catalin Sindile, former first deputy head of the Romanian Gendarmerie.

The three are accused of abuse of office, and Laurentiu Cazan for the crime of intellectual forgery.

In the same file, 13 other officers and non-commissioned officers from the Bucharest Gendarmerie were sent to trial for abusive behavior or complicity in this crime.

According to the source, on 10 August 2018, at 11:11 p.m., on the occasion of the protest rally that took place in Piata Victoriei in the very core of Bucharest, in front of the Government building, colonel Laurentiu Cazan, as the commander of the action, as well as Gheorghe Cucos and Ionut Sindile, as coordinators of the same action, performed their duties in a defective manner and ordered the subordinate gendarmes, in violation of the legal provisions, to intervene by force in order to disperse the entire mass of protesters present in the square, approximately 30,000 people, an intervention that they actually led later.

Their actions had the consequences of restricting the freedom of assembly and the right to physical and mental integrity of the demonstrators present in Victoriei Square, fundamental rights provided for by the Romanian Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), as well as causing physical suffering or injuries which required between one and 50 days of medical care to heal a number of 433 people, the investigators say.

The prosecutors specify that, in this file, there were also settlement solutions, two dismissals against two defendants, with which two plea agreements were later concluded in terms of committing the crime of abusive behavior, as well as other dismissals in order to identify some gendarmes regarding whom, from the investigations carried out, there were indications of the commission of criminal acts.

Until 1 August 2023, 312 of the injured persons were civil parties in the case.

The military prosecutors ordered the introduction into the criminal process, as civilly responsible parties, of the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Gendarmerie and the General Directorate of Gendarmerie of the Municipality of Bucharest.

The file was sent for trial to the Bucharest Military Court.