The Liberal-Democrats’ initiative to annul the statute of limitations for the crimes committed in April 2009 will not be successful, considers First Deputy Prosecutor General Andrei Pantea, lawyer Vitalie Nagacevschi and program director at Promo-Lex Association Pavel Postica, who were invited to the program “Moldova Live” on the public TV channel Moldova 1. However, the three invitees had dissenting opinions about the investigation of the April 2009 events.
According to Pavel Postica, there is not much time left until the statute of limitations expires, while the adoption of a law implies a certain procedure. “If such a law is passed in a record time, certain norms will surely be violated and, in the end, it will be declared unconstitutional,” he stated.
Vitalie Nagacevschi, ex-head of the parliamentary commission of inquiry into the April 2009 events, considers this is only a populist initiative that will be ineffective. According to the former Liberal-Democratic lawmaker, the given initiative is discriminatory in character and this runs counter to the Constitution and the international legislation providing that all are equal before the law.
Andrei Pantea also believes that such a law will not be successful because the penal legislation does not stipulate the retroactivity of the law. The prosecutors are not to blame for the fact that no person was convicted of use of torture in April 2009 as it is the judges who delay the examination of the cases.
Pavel Postica considers that certain circles of interest made everything possible to delay things so that the statute of limitations expires. “The same was done in the case of the judges who tried cases in police stations and thus they could not be held accountable,” he stated.
Vitalie Nagacevschi underlined that the law enforcement bodies managed to destroy the evidence until the political conjuncture changed and the investigations were carried out by persons who didn’t want somebody to be punished.
