Transnistrian militiamen systematically make raids on the territory controlled by the constitutional authorities of Moldova and kidnap persons whom they take by force to the separatist region. Ranging from ordinary people to ex-functionaries of the local administration, the victims are often tortured into admitting particular offenses. According to journalists of the investigative association RISE Moldova, some of the kidnapping operations were performed with the assistance of Moldovan policemen. Officially, cooperation with the unconstitutional authorities of the Transnistrian region is banned, IPN reports.
In an investigation, RISE relates the case of Yuri Ghervaziuc, former head of the Transnistrian customs. In the evening of February 15, 2017, he was driving on the Odessa-Chisinau road. He was coming from Ukraine and was hurrying to reach the capital of the Republic of Moldova. As his wife said, the next day in the morning Ghervaziuc was to go to Russia’s consulate to collect his new passport of Russian citizen. According to his lawyers, on a road section between the towns Causeni and Anenii Noi he was stopped by two employees of the National Patrolling Inspectorate. One of them approached him and asked for his papers. Meanwhile, several masked persons got out of a Nissan car parked nearby. Relatives said Ghervaziuc was taken out of the car by force, was beaten and thrown in the trunk of the other car after putting Scotch tape on his mouth and a bag on his head. Two hours later, Ghervaziuc was already in the building of the Tiraspol Investigation Committee. He was charged with tax evasion in considerable amounts.
According to the relatives and lawyers of the ex-Transnistrian official, Ghervaziuc was hospitalized the next day after his arrest. Later the doctors determined that he had three broken ribs and bruises on the head, breast and waist. The former Transnistrian official possesses also Moldovan nationality and the way in which he was arrested and taken to Tiraspol represents kidnapping and illegal deprivation of liberty in accordance with the penal legislation. The two offenses, if they are committed by two or more persons, carry a penalty of at least six and, respectively, three years in jail. Notified by the lawyers for Ghervaziuc, the Anenii Noi Prosecutor’s Office started a criminal case, but later dropped this for the reason that there were no elements of an offense. The decision to drop the case was appealed to the superior prosecutor, but this rejected the request of the defense.
Ultimately, the lawyers challenged the decision in court. Thus, at the end of June 2017 judge Igor Brai of the Anenii Noi Court held that the “alleged investigation” by the prosecution body was conducted with violations of the legislation and the deep-rooted principles of the ECHR. Moreover, he ruled that the conclusions of the prosecutor were evidently arbitrary and the complaint was thus examined unilaterally and superficially.
The judge argued that prosecutor Viorel Gaina didn’t take a number of required measures and thus ordered to send back the case and obliged the prosecutor to remove the identified violations. As a result, the Anenii Noi Prosecutor’s Office started already two criminal cases – over kidnapping and causing of bodily injuries. Prosecutor Viorel Gaina said he now cannot provide more details. The court decided that the case wasn’t investigated objectively and he cannot comment on a court decision.
According to the journalists of RISE, Alexandru Panzari, chief of the General Police Inspectorate, denied the involvement of his inferiors in the arrest operation. Moreover, he assured that the R-30 Causeni-Anenii Noi road wasn’t patrolled by employees of the National Patrolling Inspectorate in the period when Yuri Ghervaziuc was arrested. He noted the police employees cooperate only with the constitutional authorities. Consequently, these are banned from cooperating with the unconstitutional authorities of the Transnistrian region or this would represent abuse of power. The Prosecutor General’s Office also denied any possibility of cooperating with the Transnistrian militia.
The investigation says the Transnistrian militia systematically kidnaps persons from the territory controlled by Chisinau and takes these to the separatist region by force. At present, the police are investigating four cases of illegal deprivation of liberty of Moldovan citizens by so-called employees of the unconstitutional authorities of the Transnistrian region. “Even if the police officially deny any cooperation and involvement in the actions of the Transnistrian militia on the territory from the right side of the Nistru, there is yet unofficial cooperation between the police of Chisinau and of Tiraspol,” says a report compiled by the International Federation for Human Rights in 2013 with support from Promo-LEX Association of Moldova.
Another case covered by the journalists of RISE Moldova is that of Ion Macari from Lipceni village of Rezina district, who in November 2011 was taken by Transnistrian militiamen from the yard of the mayor’s office to Camenca town, where he was charged with theft. On the right side of the Nistru, the Rezina Prosecutor’s Office accused Vasile Bacila, who works as a sector police inspector in Lipceni, of collusion in kidnapping and abuse of power. The policeman admitted his guilt, saying he acted as an intermediary in the meeting of the militiamen from Camenca and Ion Macari, at the instruction of his superiors from the district. But his chiefs categorically denied this information. Moreover, Bacila said he knew nothing about the intention of the Transnistrian militiamen and these assured him that they were to only discuss with Macari.
Thus, after establishing that the constitutional rights of Ion Macari were violated, prosecutor Igor Negreanu dropped the charges against the sector police inspector for the reason that the persons involved in the kidnapping of Macari could not be identified and no evidence was discovered to show Vasile Bacila’s intentional participation. Contacted by phone, Macari refused to talk to the RISE journalists about his kidnapping in 2011.
In another case, Gennady Negruta, ex-prosecutor in the Transnistrians region, in 2011 was arrested by militiamen in the center of Rezina town on bribery charges. According to the statements of Negruta, his arrest involved Andrei Mejinskii, the brother of the ex-director of the Center for Combating Corruption and Economic Crime of Chisinau (CCCEC, currently National Anticorruption Center) Valentin Mejinski. Andrei Mejinski was then deputy head of the so-called organized crime and corruption combating division of the Transnistrian ministry of the interior. The operation of the Transnistrian militiamen on the right side of the Nistru was carried out with the participation of two officers of the CCCEC. In 2012, Gennady Negruta was sentenced by the so-called supreme court of justice of Tiraspol to four years and six months in jail, with confiscation of his property. But after he filed a complaint, in 2012 the Rezina Prosecutor’s Office took legal action against the two CCCEC officers who took part in the operation in Rezina. Several years later, the charges against the suspects were dropped. Lawyer Alexandru Postica challenged in court the prosecutors’ decision. The court nullified the decision and obliged the prosecutors to resume the investigation.
The persons kidnapped from the territory controlled by the Moldovan constitutional authorities find themselves in a region where violence and inhuman and degrading treatment are systematically used by the militia. The few cases started against the militiamen have gathered dust for years. Local journalists asked the so-called prosecutor’s office of Transnistria to provide statistics about the number of cases of abuse of power, use of torture and ill-treatment by the militia. The received answer says the prosecutor is not obliged to provide explanations.
In March 2017, the journalists sent an application to Vasilii Kaliko, who was then so-called people’s ombudsman in Transnistria. This said that during his ten years in office he received many complaints about abuses by militiamen. “You are too focused on these acts of torture… No one is preoccupied with the fact that the pensioners die of hunger … I think we devote too much attention to such cases,” stated Vasilii Kaliko, who served as an ombudsman in Transnistria in 2006-2017.
