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The Brussels-based NGO Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF) has welcomed a 15 January 2025 decision by the High Court of Cassation and Justice in Bucharest to uphold a July 2024 decision by the Bucharest Court of Appeal to fully exonerate Gabiel Popoviciu. Romania’s High Court of Justice and Cassation hearing was the final step in a legal case about the Băneasa development in Romania. This final decision to acquit Popoviciu is a definitive ruling in legal saga that has spanned almost two decades.
HRWF emphasised the July 2024 ruling by the Bucharest Court of Appeal’s Judge Liana Arsenie, in particular her strong words about the treatment that Popoviciu and his fellow defendants had received from Prosecutor Nicolae Marin. In her ruling, Judge Arsenie said: “The investigating authority assigned fictitious roles and functions and imagined authority relationships. The prosecution was built on a scenario imagined by the prosecutor.”
HRWF also commented on the United Kingdom courts’ refusal in 2021 and 2023 to extradite Popoviciu to Romania, on the basis that there was “a real risk that the appellant suffered an extreme example of a lack of judicial impartiality, such that there can be no question as to consequences for the fairness of the trial.” Edward Fitzgerald KC said that Popoviciu would suffer a “flagrant denial of justice” if extradited to Romania.
Speaking from Brussels, HRWF Director Willy Fautré said: “This final court decision is to be welcomed, building as it does on the Bucharest Court of Appeal’s ruling last July, as well as earlier court decisions in the UK to refuse Romanian requests to extradite Mr Popoviciu. However, for those of us focused on human rights within the European Union, there is concern that such a lengthy injustice even took place in Romania, an EU country. There should be particular concern that several courts have now ruled that Mr Popoviciu suffered persecution at the hands of a prosecutor in what is an EU, and now even Schengen, country.”
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