The former deputy director of the Security and Intelligence Service (SIS) Alexandru Balan said the actions of the Chisinau Intentional Airport shooter of this June can be classed as terrorist act offense. He says this given his experience as coordinator of the main operational activities of the SIS, incusing of the SIS’s Antiterrorist Center.
“As far as we know, the tragic incident at the Chisinau Airport involved a citizen of Tajikistan, who disarmed a border guard and fired several shots, killing two persons. The man was hurt and died in the hospital later. The shooter arrived by the Istanbul-Chisinau flight at 2:48 p.m. At 3:21 p.m., his papers were examined by the Border Police and he was at that moment isolated and was informed that he was banned access to the Republic of Moldova. The shooter attacked the border guard at 5:13 p.m.” Alexandru Balan stated in a news conference at IPN.
According to him, the law on the Security and Intelligence Service provides that the purpose of the Service is to fight terrorism and other threats to state institutions, by using preventive means. “When the plane landed by the Istanbul-Chisinau flight on June 30, 2023, the SIS was obliged to possess preliminary information about the offender from Tajikistan. The obligation of the SIS derives from the law on the prevention and combating of terrorism. According to Article 21 of the given law, the SIS within 24 hours of the planned flight departure hour was to check the lists of passengers. Even if the preventive check wasn’t possible, the possibility of identifying the offender since the plane landed until the incident happened was missed. But the Prosecutor General’s Office in Dushanbe made public the information about the attacker, Rustam Asharov, who was wanted for involvement in the kidnapping of the first vice president of a bank in Dushanbe,” stated the former SIS deputy director.
According to him, in the prevention of terrorism, the antiterrorist exercises staged by the Antiterrorist Center of the SIS aren’t less important, but the administrant of the SIS neglects these exercises. “The non-staging of antiterrorist exercises during the past four years inevitably affected the SIS’s response capacity to such crisis situations as that witnessed this summer. These functional requirements were to be honored by the administration of the SIS, in particular the deputy head of the SIS Sergiu Druță,” noted Alexandru Balan.
According to him, another action of incompetence and negligence is the dismemberment of the SS subunit responsible for antiterrorist protection of the critical infrastructure based on the order of the former SIS director Alexandr Esaulenco, of 2019. “The absence of measures aimed at identifying, preventing and counteracting the offenses that happened at the Chisinau International Airport are a serious deviation of the Service. The actions of the SIS deputy head Sergiu Druță, owing to the negligent and insensible attitude of this to his professional obligations, which caused considerable damage to the public interests or rights and interests protected by law of private individuals or legal entities, led to the death of persons and other serious consequences,” stated Alexandru Balan. According to him, Sergiu Druță should be dismissed for negligence, as the chief of the Border Police was.
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