Individuals were infiltrated into crowd on April 7 to destabilize situation, SIS

The information possessed by the Security and Information Service (SIS) allows describing the April 7, 2009 protests as legally planned events. But the investigations show that the peaceful protesters were incited to violence by individuals who aimed to stir things up and destabilize the situation. An answer provided by the SIS to Info-Prim Neo News Agency says that the meeting in the Great National Assembly Square was a protest against the alleged irregularities in the legislative elections. “The investigations revealed that steps were taken to incite the protesters who were near the Parliament and Presidential Buildings. As a result, these buildings were devastated and partially burned. It was established that individuals were infiltrated into the crowd with the aim of stirring things up and inciting the peaceful protesters to violence,” reads the note from the SIS. The SIS also said that there were no dangers of internal destabilization and this fact was confirmed by the restored documents destroyed before the change of the SIS administration in September 2009. It did not possess information that the organizers of the public rally planned to resort to violence. “The institution informed the authorities in detail about the developments in the election campaign, including the pre- and post-election plans of the parliamentary opposition. There were no signs that a coup or other events aimed at destabilizing the internal situation were being prepared by the then opposition,” the SIS says in its note. According to the SIS, the destruction of an important part of the materials, approved of by the former SIS administration, including with the aim of removing the proofs about the nature of the illegal activities, makes the complete reconstruction of the events that happened before April 6-7, 2009 difficult. “The measures taken to identify the instigators were also difficult as a large part of them wore masks. The law enforcement bodies focused only on the monitoring of the opposition’s actions, without taking into account the complexity of the range of vulnerable environments that could lead to the prevention of the April 6-7, 2009 violence,” says the note. The Prosecutor General’s Office is examining also other versions within the legal case opened after those events, but avoids giving information, arguing the investigation is secret. Communist MP Artur Reshetnikov, who headed the SIS in 2009, told Info-Prim Neo’s reporter that he cannot make statements as he is a witness in this case. He said yet that he has nothing to hide and the facts are already known. On April 7, 2009, several dozen young people came together in the central square of Chisinau to protest against the results of the April 5 parliamentary elections, in which the PCRM won a majority of votes. The peaceful protests degenerated into riots and the Parliament and Presidential Buildings were devastated. The authorities have not yet officially announced whether those events had been planned or not.