The life of “Our Home is Moldova” (OHM) party leader Grigore Petrenco, arrested last September 6, is in danger, maintains his lawyer Anna Ursachi.

 

She organized a news conference at Infotag on Friday to describe the conditions of detention arranged for a Member of the previous Moldovan Parliament and ex-Deputy Chairperson of the Unified European Left group in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

 

Recently, for instance, his prison cell was subjected to “an unprecedented search”, as the lawyer qualified it. To make that experience more understandable to the local and international public, Petrenco wrote an open letter to the Republic of Moldova citizens and to the heads of foreign diplomatic missions working in Moldova.

 

Grigore Petrenco wrote that on October 18 evening, three plain-clothed gentlemen rushed noisily into his cell, saying they were the officers of the Ministry of Justice Penitentiary Department.

 

“They did not produce any identification documents or official reasons for carrying out the search. They behaved a defiantly barefaced manner. All Petrenco’s personal effects were turned upside down and all his personal letters read through. Upon completion of that job, the officers did not care to draw up a search protocol as is required by the law. That was a gross violation of legal norms”, stated the lawyer.

 

Anna Ursachi underlined that such a manner of behavior by Penitentiary Department officers became possible upon the recent appointment of the Democratic Party’s placeman Alexandru Pinzari as Department Director.

 

“Pinzari is the personal appointee of our all-mighty oligarch Vlad Plahotniuc having personal claims to Petrenco. Plahotniuc feels ferocious, biological hatred towards my client who many a time disclosed in public the oligarch’s shady affairs. Plahotniuc is thus trying to psychologically ruin the politician arrested on an invented pretext. By law, searches in prison #13, where Petrenco is kept, may be carried out only upon a sanction issued by the Head of the MoJ Penitentiary Department. I am sure the search was ordered by Plahotniuc, and Pinzari only did what he was told because he is on Plahotniuc’s hook: in due time, Pinzari was a suspect charged of falsification of evidence in the case on the April 7, 2009 events in Chisinau”, said Anna Ursachi.

 

The lawyer regards Grigore Petrenco to be Moldova’s first political prisoner.

 

“That fact was recognized also by 30 Deputies of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, who recently signed a letter to Chisinau with a demand to immediately release the politician. But Plahotniuc, who seized control over all power agencies in the country, simply ignored the European parliamentarians’ demand. That’s why we are addressing to the Ambassadors of the United States and of the European Union Delegation to Moldova – James D. Pettit and Pirkka Tapiola as well as other foreign diplomats – to interfere into the Petrenco case. The hearing of the Petrenco Group Case has been scheduled for October 28. But the politician is being strongly pressed on, and the pressure is assuming dangerous forms. We are demanding an immediate protection for him”, stated lawyer Anna Ursachi.