Lawyer Victor Panţâru said the law enforcement agencies of Moldova should carry out an audit at the law enforcement bodies in Edineţ district. In a news conference at IPN, the lawyer said the murder of a 25-yearold man in August 2019 was investigated inappropriately.
Victor Panţâru noted the law enforcement bodies in Edineţ should have investigated the incompetence of the doctors who didn’t react correctly and swiftly to save the young man’s life and also the incompetence of the medical examiners who didn’t take pictures of each wound and didn’t describe the wounds when compiling a medical-legal examination report. “This is crucial information in an investigation for the simple reason that this can prove the guilt or innocence of the accused,” stated the lawyer.
According to Victor Panţâru, the incompetence of the law enforcement bodies in Edineţ is also proven by the fact that the case was sent to court as a case of ordinary murder, not of murder committed with special cruelty given that the victim was stabbed for over ten times. If the case was examined as murder committed with special cruelty, the punishment for the culprit would be much higher and the case would be examined by a panel of judges, not by only one judge. “All these data point to the incompetence of the law enforcement bodies. It is serious when the law enforcement bodies consider the criminal cases should be investigated this way.”
The lawyer also said that the prosecution bodies should know that in such tragedies, the most important thing is to get at the truth, no matter what this is, and this is important for the successors of the injured parties, for all the sides involved in the trial and, first of all, for the accused. It is important to build a picture of what happened. “The investigation leaves room for many questions. This is nothing else but a clear proof of the fact that the goal was to allow this to happen or, more serious, this is how the prosecution bodies consider the cases of murder should be probed,” stated Victor Panţâru.
The victim’s mother Angela Paleva said that a number of proofs are absent from the case, including video recordings that can shed light in this case. After analyzing the documents attached to the file and the information she learned post-factum about the evening of the tragedy, she determined that many things were omitted or were hidden intentionally. As a result, the case was classed as ordinary murder.
On August 8, 2019, the police announced that the 25-year-old man was stabbed by a friend of his after he went inebriated to the place of this late at night to invite him to a walk and a quarrel arouse between them as a result. The victim lived in Russia and came to Moldova to visit his relatives.
