Bucharest Court of Appeals recognised War for liberation of Basarabia and Bucovina as legitimate

The judges of the Bucharest Court of Appeals (BCA) have declared the secret Protocol no. 3 of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact as null and acquitted the members of the Antonescu group for “crimes against peace, for which they were sentenced in 1946, as a result of the aggression against the peoples of the Soviet Russia”. As the Romanian mass media reports, the Court of Appeals found that the war for the liberation of Basarabia and Bucovina, has been lawful, until removing the imminence of the soviet military danger. Also, Marshal Ion Antonescu, head of the Iron Guard (Garda de Fier), Horia Sima, and another 19 members of the Romanian Government of 1940 were acquitted for “war crimes imputed as a result of the military cooperation between Romania and Germany in the aggression against the peoples of the Soviet Russia". As BCA says, “the secret Protocol no. 3 of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, under the established sphere of influence, has laid on the basis of the serious territorial aggression sustained by Romania in 1940. Thus, there were violated the imperative norms of the international right at that time, regarding the states’ territorial integrity, including the article 10 of the League of Nations Pact”. BCA took this decision after about 60 years of the sentence of Antonescu’s government, as part of suing the request for the lawsuit’s revision, made by his son Gheorghe Alexianu – former governor of Transnistria, sentenced in one of Antonescu’s cases. Also, CAB has partially acquitted Gheorghe Alexianu for the “crime against the peace in opposition to the Bolshevik Soviet Union, as this power, along with the national socialist Germany, has delimitated the sphere of influence in Eastern Europe through the pact of non-aggression”. Ion Antonescu took over the power in September 1940 and has governed Romania together with the Iron Guard, led by Horia Sima, for several months. After the legionary rebellion in January 1941, Antonescu, self-appointed, by that time, Romania’s governor remained in power alone, the role of the young king Mihai being a rather decorative one. Antonescu, advanced to the rank of marshal, was removed from power in August 23, 1944, arrested by communists and sent to prison in the Soviet Union. Two years later, he was brought to Romania, sued by a "Tribunal of People", sentenced to death and executed (by shooting) in Jilava.