Political prisoners recently set free by separatist authorities receive official invitation from Romanian Government for rehabilitation in Romania

Those three political prisoners from Tiraspol – Alexandru Lesco, Andrei Ivantoc and Tudor Petrov-Popa – will benefit from a long rest in Romania. The official invitation made by the Government of Romania was handled to the patriots by the Romanian State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mihai Gehorghiu, and concurrently the head of the Department for Relations with the Romanians Living Abroad, who visited Chisinau for this purpose. Mihai Gheorghiu told a briefing on June 12 that he came to Chisinau to bring the greetings of the Romanian Government to those two political prisoners recently set free and to thank them for the inner force they had, for the capacity to withstand all these years all the pressures and injustice. The Romanian official said that he made an agreement with the former prisoners about the visit they will pay to Romania and hoped it will offer to those three heroes all the support they need in these difficult moments when they have to adapt to the life outside the prison and changes occurred over the last 15 years. Asked if Romania discussed with the Moldovan authorities the proposal made to those three former prisoners, who are also citizens of Moldova, Gheorgiu said this is a relation between the authorities of the Romanian state with the citizens of Romania, and “for this invitation we need nothing else than the consent of those invited”. The Romanian state secretary specified that, regardless of the political options or commitments of those three members of the “Ilascu group”, the Government of Romania is interested in them only as Romanian citizens and historical personalities of Romania and Moldova. At the same time, Romanian President Traian Basescu announced at the end of the last week, at Bookfest, he will confer the “Star of Romania” on those three heroes after in 1994 the Romanian Patriarch awarded the Patriarchal Cross to the three heroes from Nistru, the highest distinction conferred by the Romanian Orthodox Church on laymen.