Ministry of Interior undertakes all legal actions for releasing arrested Moldovan policemen

The Ministry of Interior will undertake all the legal actions for releasing the two policemen arrested, on June 14, together with other three colleagues, by the intelligence services of Tiraspol. The interior minister, Gheorghe Papuc, made this statement. According to Papuc, two policemen, Stefan Mangar, subdivision head within the Department for Fighting Organized Crime, police lieutenant-colonel, and Constantin Condrea, the deputy head of the Criminal Police of CPR Tighina, are still under detention in Transnistria, maltreated and drugged. The arrest order, issued by the court of Tiraspol for 72 hours, in spite of the pressures made by the separatist authorities to get a 2-month mandate, expires on Tuesday, June 20. Anyway, the minister does not believe that they will be released. At the same time, three employees of the Police Station of Tighina, Anatol Pohila, Victor Vasilevici and Igor Datco, were released without any explanation regarding their arrest. At the moment, they are at the MAI hospital, where they take a recovery treatment. Minister Papuc considered as „aberrant” the statement of the ministry of national security of Tiraspol regarding the policemen’s intention to kidnap certain leaders of the Transnistrian region, clarifying that one of the policemen was filming a hotel where a person suspected of trafficking in humans was accommodated in. At the same briefing, the chairman of Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Stefan Uratu, said that 4 members of the Committee are in Tiraspol to investigate the case and, he says, the policemen were arrested in order to be exchanged for the release of certain persons arrested in Chisinau. Uratu considers that penal proceedings must start against the executors of these offenses. Those 5 policemen were arrested on June 14. 3 of them were released on June 17, and the court of Tiraspol prolonged the arrest of the other 2 policemen for 72 hours. Until now, MAI wasn’t informed about the so-called arrest, neither about the policemen’s charges. Gheorghe Papuc considers this case as an additional attempt to shaken the situation in the region.