The Mineriada file. Why did Iliescu thank the miners in 1990: astonishing details from the file

“I thank you all once again for what you have demonstrated in these days as well: that you are a strong force, with a high civic and labor discipline; people of hope and for good, but especially for hardship”, says the former president of Romania.

June 15, 1990. Thousands of miners gathered at Romexpo. Here, Ion Iliescu thanked them with a smile on his face for restoring order in the Capital. The president thus used the speech as a pretext that the Mineriada had been a spontaneous manifestation.

The General Prosecutor’s Office continues the criminal investigation in the Mining Case against Roman, Voiculescu, Măgureanu, Cozma and Sârbu

25 years later, in 2015, when he was accused of crimes against humanity, Iliescu denied everything.

“I am attributed with the orientation of Mineriadeler, which was a fake and is a fake. I really tried to avoid something like that. It was illegal,” said Iliescu.

“There are military diaries of the MApN that clearly show that Iliescu was deciding where to intervene against the protesters; how long where the MApN troops would intervene, this time, because on June 13 there was a brutal intervention from both the Ministry of the Interior and the MApN.

It was not the miners who killed the four, but the forces of both the MAi and MApN. How? On June 13 it happened, a warning shot was fired from the Ministry of the Interior, this is proven, a circumstance in which two victims died”, said Catalin Ranco Pitu, former chief prosecutor, Military Prosecutor’s Office section.

In 2019, when it was 30 years since the Revolution, the first Prime Minister of Romania after the fall of communism, Petre Roman, also accused of crimes against humanity in the “Mineriadei” File, said clearly and bluntly that Iliescu should not be tried.

Ion Iliescu, summoned again to the court. The title of revolutionary is being challenged against the former president

Reporter: Should Ion Iliescu be tried?

Petre Roman: I don’t think so. In any case, what does not match in any way is the accusation, that is, the framing of the crime.

“The new power led by Ion Iliescu made the miners loyal. Ever since Lenin, every communist leader was educated to take care of this force. And Ion Iliescu made them loyal. So the miners felt obliged to come to the support of the new power and that happened”, said Catalin Rancu Pitu.

“It has been tried, as much as possible, in recent years to prove who specifically fired, but it could not be established with certainty which are the MAI cadres who killed the two and under what concrete circumstances it happened, because, at at that time, the on-site investigation was not done,” the former chief prosecutor also said.