After the appearance of the Declaration signed by 32 Deputies of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who demanded an immediate release of politician Grigore Petrenco from custody, Europe will give up its policy of half-measures towards the Moldovan authorities. Such is the opinion of Grigore Petrenco’s lawyer Anna Ursachi.

 

Speaking at a news conference at Infotag today, Anna Ursachi said that together with Mrs. Petrenco and with ex-MP Alexander Petkov she spent last September days in Strasbourg, explaining in the Parliamentary Assembly what actually is going on in Moldova.

 

“European parliamentarians fully realize that standing behind all these events – victimization of political opponents, arrests and provocations against the opposition etc. – is oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc. By means of his own 6 television channels, he can well halt or filter information about what his image in Europe is. PACE deputies are aware of the trials run in Great Britain and in the Netherlands, in which Plahotniuc figures as a person involved into shady affairs and as a person related to the siphoning off a billion euros from Moldovan banks”, said Ursachi.

 

Alexander Petkov called the PACE deputies’ Declaration in Petrenco’s support an important-most document, whose significance he believes is comparable with the loud article about Moldova headlined “Bring Moldova Back from the Brink”, published in the New York Times last August by Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjorn Jagland.

 

“Unlike Jagland who refrained from mentioning concrete names of those responsible for what is happening in Moldova, the PACE deputies openly stated that this personage is Plahotniuc. After communication with PACE deputies, I came to have an impression that they understand that the methods used by the Moldovan authorities with respect to their political opponents fail to match the notion of a law-governed state”, said Petcov.

 

Concerning the possible consequences of the Declaration for Moldova, Alexander Petkov explained that now the Parliamentary Assembly will send the document to the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers that will demand an answer from the Moldovan authorities concerning the human right violation and the arrest of the Petrenco group.

 

Infotag’s dossier: On September 6, OHM Chairman Grigore Petrenco (who was a member of the previous Moldovan Parliament and an ex-Deputy Chairperson of the PACE Unified European Left group) and eight OHM activists were arrested for 30 days “for organization of unrest”. On that day, they brought tens of their supporters for an action of protest before the Prosecutor General’s Office. The police did not let them approach the Office doors. A noisy scuffle broke out, in which 6 cops were slightly injured. The Ministry of the Interior put the entire responsibility for the incident on the protesters. But their lawyers are insisting on the opposite scenario.