Ilie Cazac was beaten for requesting pardon from Transnistrian leader

Ilie Cazac, the young tax inspector who was sentenced by the Tiraspol regime to 14 years in prison for spying for Moldova, was severely beaten for writing a pardon request to Transnistrian leader Igor Smirnov, according to Stela Surchicean, the detainee's mother. Stela Surchicean learned the information from unofficial sources, as she and other family members are barred from personally seeing Ilie. “Ilie was beaten last night. I don't know anything about his condition and this makes me desperate. I found out from unofficial sources that the Transnistrian authorities are planning to relocate him to a penitentiary where he'd be completely isolated from society”, Stela Surchicean told Info-Prim Neo. She said that Ilie would most likely be relocated to Glinoaia. “At his current detention place, Ilie is allowed to go to the prison yard for fresh air, to visit the library, to exercise, but there in Glinoaia, he'll be completely isolated. They want to isolate him from the rest of the world, so that nobody can ever know he exists, so that he can never get out of there, because he saw too much”. Stela Surchicean added she was very hopeful that the upcoming meeting between Moldovan MP Vlad Filat and Igor Smirnov in Germany would improve her son's situation, although she didn't rule out that Ilie had been beaten at Smirnov's indication. Ilie Cazac asked for pardon twice, on August 1 and a week later. His first attempt was officially rejected. A former tax inspector in Bender, Ilie Cazac was arrested in March 2010 on charges of “state treason and spying in favor of Moldova”. On 9 February 2011, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison. Several months earlier, in December 2010, journalist Ernest Vardanyan was found guilty of the same charges and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment. He was granted pardon four months later.