Bucharest - Romania's military
prosecutors sent former president Ion Iliescu and former prime
minister Petre Roman to trial on Tuesday on charges of crimes
against humanity over violent clashes in Bucharest in 1990.
Prosecutors said Iliescu, Roman and several other officials
at the time used police as well as miners and other workers to
quash peaceful protests in Bucharest's iconic University Square,
resulting in the death of four people.
Another 1 388 people were injured and 1,250 protesters were
illegally detained during the clashes, which took place exactly
27 years ago on June 13-15.
The protests against Iliescu's rise to power after the 1989
fall of communism broke out in April, one month before the
country's first democratic election, which he won.
They carried on peacefully until June, when Iliescu summoned
thousands of miners and workers from counties across the country
to Bucharest to help police end what he and other officials
called a fascist coup attempt.
"State authorities ... decided to trigger a violent attack
against University Square protesters," prosecutors said in a
statement.
"The repression ... continued in a systematic attack
together with miners and workers from several counties which had
become a force parallel to the recognised legal ones."
Iliescu, now 87, has repeatedly denied accusations that he
engineered the violence, which Western observers said had
hampered Romania's transition to a market economy and deterred
foreign investment for years.
Miners descended repeatedly on the capital in the first
post-communist decade and were once a strong political force.