Prosecutor who opened case of police violence against demonstrators speaks up: Romanian justice in state of "chaos before collapse"

The Romanian justice system is in a state of „chaos before collapse” and it hasn’t seen such a poignant dissolution of state authority since the early nineties, shortly after the 1989 revolution, a prominent prosecutor involved in a key case of police violence has commented in an interview with HotNews.ro.

Bogdan Pirlog is a military prosecutor who has opened an inquiry into the riot police violence of August 10, 2018, whent gendarmes intervened forcefully against largely peaceful anti-government protests in Bucharest. The violence saw hundreds of injured people and was mostly blamed on authorities under the Social Democratic (PSD) government. The case has since been taken over by the prosecutor’s office dealing with organised crime and terrorism, DIICOT.

Asked how he would describe the state of the Romanian Justice after three years of „reforms” under the PSD-ALDE government, he said: „Chaos before collapse”.

The judiciary has been the constant target of actions by the governing coalition since its victory in the 2016 general elections. The PSD-ALDE especially focused on moves to stifle the fight against corruption and to strengthen political control over the judiciary.

But Pirlog was a bit optimistic, saying that the system of the judiciary could not be „fully” destroyed and „there is hope that we have the capacity to rebound”. Still, „we won’t be able to fix in less than ten years what has happened for the past three years”.

Pirlog was one of the candidates to lead the recently established „special section” aimed at investigating magistrates. Critics have warned the section was a tool in the hands of politicians interested in keeping magistrates in check and prosecutor Pirlog himself was a constant critic of it.

He said the section „shouldn’t have been established” and was „extraordinarily dangerous”, but might be dismantled towards the end of the year following a decision by the European Court of Justice.