Valeriu Pasat returns to Moldova

Former minister of defense Valeriu Pasat returned to Moldova on Monday, November 2. He said that the first thing he intends to do is to visit his mother, who has been confined to bed since 2005. Then, he will meet his lawyers and go to the Prosecutor’s Office to familiarize himself with the accusations of attempted coup and attempt to murder Iurie Rosca in 2005 made against him. “The dramatic epopee that has lasted for about five years has a happy ending as I am finally back home,” Valeriu Pasat said after landing on the Chisinau International Airport. “I hope the current administration of the Prosecutor’s Office will have the courage to investigate the cases started against me and will make a correct decision.” He also said that he intends to present the scientific works that were banned for publication while he had been in detention and will then create a foundation that will propagate the history of our people and will stage an exhibition about the deportations from Moldova. Pasat denied the reports that he plans to go into politics. “If I wanted to get involved in politics I could do it in the spring elections as I received invitations from a number of parties, but I refused.” After the hearings opened in March 2005, shortly after the parliamentary elections, and after about two years in the remand center, Pasat took refuge in Moscow in July 2007. Recently, he complained to the new prosecutor general that he cannot come to Moldova as his passport expired in 2008, but the Moldovan authorities refuse to renew it. He also asked that the Prosecutor General’s Office hasten the examination of the cases opened against him in 2006 and send them to court. Valeriu Pasat was arrested on March 11, 2005. He had been in detention for about two years and was then amnestied. Two of the cases against him, in which he is accused of prejudicing the state by selling military warplanes and rockets, have been examined two times, including at the Supreme Court of Justice. Every time, they were sent back. In July 2009, the Chisinau Court of Appeals examined them for the third time and confirmed again that the former minister was not guilty. The other two cases opened while he was in custody in 2006, in which he is accused of smuggling armament and of attempted coup at the instructions of the Kremlin, were not sent to court.