The Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office completed the investigation and sent to court the criminal case started against three employees of the Chisinau-based Penitentiary No. 13 over abuse of power. The legal proceedings were instituted based on a complaint filed by a journalist, who said that he was illegally held at the given penitentiary during three days, IPN reports.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, in June 2014 the journalist was detained on suspicion that he committed a number of offenses and was taken to Penitentiary No. 13. Though he was to be put in a separate cell, the prison’s employees, in particular the head of the Regime and Surveillance Service, the officer on guard and the block chief, placed the journalist in a cell with five persons who were convicted of very serious crimes, violating thus his rights. They also allowed psychological pressure on him for finding out the journalist’s sources of information.
To intimidate him, the culprits made sure that the journalist was accompanied by persons affected by the information published by him during his walks through the jail. These threatened him so that he officially refuted this information.
If they are found guilty, the penitentiary’s employees will serve up to three years in jail and will be banned from holding particular posts or performing particular activities for up to five years.
IPN notes that this journalist is Vadim Ungureanu, of the editorial staff of the portal Deschide. On June 20, 2014, he was placed under arrest for 72 hours because he would have blackmailed persons holding high-ranking posts in order to obtain personal data about personalities from culture and arts.
