Former national leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) Liviu Dragnea was released from the Rahova Penitentiary on Thursday after serving more than two and a half years of a three-and-a-half-year sentence received in 2019 in the case of fictitious employment at the Teleorman child protection agency.
Dragnea said that the time he spent in prison was “torment” and “suffering,” claiming that in Romania today there is “ferocious dictatorship.”
“Two years of torment and suffering. Abuse, suffering and most of the people today have understood why I had to get here. When I left, Romania was a prosperous country, with high incomes earned by Romanians, a country where there was hope, there was a future. Unfortunately, today, it is ferocious dictatorship; freedom of expression is seriously affected, Romania’s future is mortgaged with such debts,” Dragnea said after leaving prison.
The Giurgiu Court on Thursday approved a request for conditional release from prison submitted by Dragnea after serving more than two years of a sentence of three and a half years received in 2019 in the case of fake jobs.
Bucharest District 5 Court Dragnea denied Dragnea’s request but he filed an appeal that the Giurgiu Tribunal agreed to take up on Thursday.
Initially, Dragnea’s appeal was filed with the Bucharest Tribunal, which denied his request, but he managed to move the trial to Giurgiu on the grounds that judges in Bucharest cannot be impartial in considering his request because they had signed a petition to amend justice legislation when PSD was at rule.
I consider myself a political detainee; PSD has become “operetta” party, led by “coward” people
Former leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) Liviu Dragnea declared on Thursday, after being released on parole from the Rahova Penitentiary, that he considers himself a political detainee and stated that PSD has become an “operetta” party, led by “coward” people.
“I consider myself a political detainee, because I entered innocently. I have been insistently asked in recent months, in court, when my release will be judged, to admit my guilt, which I did not accept, because this political case was wanted to be validated. Unfortunately, there is no Opposition, PSD has become an operetta party led by cowards. They all are,” Dragnea claimed.
He praised the judges at the Giurgiu Court who released him, saying that they had courage.
“I think that the judges in Giurgiu had courage. They resisted the pressure, because at the Bucharest Court it is quite clear what happened,” said Liviu Dragnea.
“I hope to find solutions to recover. I will work for my son’s company,” the former PSD head added, according to Agerpres.
Via Agerpres
