No penalties imposed on the nine judges

The nine judges against whom the Promo-Lex Association and the Institute for Human Rights complained to the Supreme Council of Magistrates escaped punishment. The Council had examined the materials of the case at a hearing on Monday, April 26, for about two hours, Info-Prim Neo reports. The president of the Supreme Council of Magistrates Dumitru Visterniceanu said the facts mentioned in the complaints against judges Oleg Melniciuc, Igor Vornicescu, Igor Manascurta, Ion Bulhac, Ala Malai, and Ludmila Cernei, as regards the examination of legal cases at police stations on April 7, 8 and 9, were not proven. Disciplinary deviations were identified in the case of judges Gheorghe Morozan, Mihail Diaconu and Anatolie Galben, but no disciplinary proceedings will be taken as the period during which this could be done expired. The judges said they did not commit violations when they examined the cases. Oleg Melniciuc, the vice president of the Rascani district court, who was accused by Promo-Lex of trying cases at the police commissariat in Rascani on April 8, 2009 and imposing administrative penalties on at least eight persons, denied the accusations. He said that in that period he examined cases that were not related to the April protests. At the end of the hearing, the jurist of Promo-Lex Doina Ioana Straisteanu, human rights expert, said the decision of the Supreme Council of Magistrates is discouraging as the judges avoided responsibility by saying they judges cases that were not connected to the April events. “This is not true. The Council should have more attentively read the complaints we filed as the judges examined cases against persons who had been maltreated by the police. We intend to take other steps, but will not make them public yet,” she said.