The families of two young people killed during the miners’ uprising back in 1991 will get 60,000 Euros in moral damages. The Court finds unacceptable that Romania didn’t finalise the inquiry yet.
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday ordered Romania to pay EUR 60, 000 in compensation for the moral damages suffered by the families of the two Romanian young people – Andrei Frumusanu and Aurica Crainiceanu – killed during the 1991 miners’ riot in Bucharest, HotNews reports.The Court in Strasbourg found that Article 2 on the right to life of the European Convention on Human Rights was violated. On September 25, 1991, 27 year old Aurica Crainiceanu and 24 year old Andrei Frumusanu were killed by shooting. Official inquiries are still not complete after 20 years. The Romanian military prosecutor’s office indictment states that a fusillade was launched in the direction of the crowd from the government building surrounded by protesters. Aurica Crainiceanu’s husband and Andrei Frumusanu’s parents submitted their claim to ECHR in March 2004. The Court in Strasbourg deplores the fact that, ‘20 years after the occurrence of the events and in spite of the public interest of knowing who was responsible for what happened, the criminal investigation and proceedings are still not over’, AFP notes, reminding that Romania ratified the European Convention on Human Rights in 1994. ECHR judges identify numerous ‘gaps’ in the investigation and note that it was entrusted to ‘military prosecutors (…) subject of the principle of subordination according to military hierarchy’, whist ‘the accused were some of the still acting highest-ranking army officials’. Without underestimating the complexity of the case, ECHR ‘considers that the general social and political context of that period alone is not enough to justify either the length of the investigation or the way in which it has been conducted all this time’.Each of the two families is being awarded EUR 30,000 in compensation for moral damages. Each of the plaintiffs asks for a review of the decision before the ECHR Grand Chamber. The Frumusanu – Crainiceanu case triggering the resignation of the Petre Roman Cabinet has been re-opened by the Military Prosecutor’s Office, according to an official answer the institution gave to Mediafax news agency and published on December 25, 2011.
