Ilie Ilascu’s plan to release his comrades from Tiraspol prison could have instigated new conflict on Nistru River - FIS former director

The former director of the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service (FIS), Ioan Talpes, asserts that the possible accomplishment of Romanian senator Ilie Ilascu’s plan to release the political prisoners from Tiraspol, could have instigated a new open conflict on the left bank of Nistru River, with decisive implications for Romania, all the more as it was about the interference of a member of Romania’s Parliament, Info-Prim Neo reports, quoting the Romanian press. As the cited press reports, Talpes stated that there was information about Ilascu’s intention to set free his comrades using force. “He was amiably intercepted and told that it would be a disaster if he instigated such an action, as the information was already spread and it was likely that it was available to those who should have counteracted such an attack”, Talpes said. As he says, “a possible storm could have generated then major complications for those who were preparing it”. Ilie Ilascu stated in Chisinau at the scientific-practical Conference “The War on the Nistru River: causes and consequences” that, after he was released from prison, he had prepared an operation to release (using force) three members of his group from the prisons of the Transnistrian separatist regime. Ilascu asserts that the plan failed after Valeriu Pasat, former head of the Information and Security Service of Moldova, requested from Talpes, at that time presidential advisor, to stop the action. “I was suggested by certain persons from there to calm down and let the matter rest”. As he says, the service headed by Pasat learnt about the plan from its organisers themselves. Then the information has reached Pasat’s friends from Moscow and, implicitly, Tiraspol, Vladimir Antiufeev, head of the secrete service on the left bank of the Nistru River. As Ilascu said, “he was advised to give up” his plans, during the period when the European Court for Human Rights (CEDO) was hearing his complaint against the Russian Federation and Transnistrian authorities. “If we made that attempt which, as we estimated, was successful 90-95%, we would lose that lawsuit. That is why, I consulted my imprisoned fellows and they accepted to wait in order to win this lawsuit”, Ilascu underlined. He declined to give details about the planned operation, but stated that “guns might have been also used”, as “in Transnistria everything can be bought and sold“. He added that certain authorities in Moldova “knew about this plan, but, passively, averted their face and tacitly allowed me to further deal with this work”. Ilie Ilascu, Andrei Ivantoc, Alexandru Lesco, Tudor Petrov-Popa, Petru Godiac and Valeriu Garbuz, along with another 30 persons, have been arrested between June 2 and 4, 1992 at their homes in Tiraspol by persons wearing uniforms with the badges of the 14-th Army of the USSR. The group, of 6 persons, after the other ones had signed everything that Transnistrian authorities requested from them, Ilascu says, was accused by Transnistrian authorities of war crimes and terrorist actions. Ilie Ilascu, who has been sentenced to death, was set free in May 2001. In June 2004, Alexandru Lesco was released after the 12 year jail term had expired. Andrei Ivantoc and Tudor Petrov-Popa are still imprisoned. They will be set free after they will serve their sentence fully.