Trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu
This is former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife being led from the people's courtroom to their EXECUTION in 1989! This happens to leaders who never listen to the people's cry and force their way. Sometimes the whole family is executed! HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF.
The trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu was held on 25 December 1989 by an Exceptional Military Tribunal, a drumhead court-martial created at the request of a newly formed group called the National Salvation Front. Its outcome was pre-determined, and it resulted in guilty verdicts and death sentences for former Romanian President and Romanian Communist Party General Secretary Nicolae Ceaușescu, and his wife, Elena Ceaușescu. The main charge was genocide. Romanian state television announced that Nicolae Ceaușescu had been responsible for the deaths of 60,000 people; the announcement did not make clear whether this was the number killed during the Romanian Revolution in Timișoara or throughout the 24 years of Ceausescu's rule.
Nevertheless, the charges did not affect the trial. General Victor Stănculescu had brought with him a specially selected team of paratroopers from a crack regiment, handpicked earlier in the morning to act as a firing squad. Before the legal proceedings began, Stănculescu had already selected the spot where the execution would take place: along one side of the wall in the barracks' square.
Nicolae Ceaușescu refused to recognize the tribunal, arguing its lack of constitutional basis and claiming that the revolutionary authorities were part of a Soviet plot
On 22 December 1989, during the Romanian Revolution, Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu left the Central Committee building in Bucharest by helicopter toward Snagov, from where they left soon afterwards towards Pitești.
The helicopter pilot claimed to be in danger from anti-aircraft fire, so he landed on the Bucharest–Târgoviște road, near Găești. They stopped a car driven by a Dr Nicolae Decă, who took them to Văcărești, after which he informed the local authorities that the Ceaușescus were going toward Târgoviște. The Ceaușescus took another car and told its driver, Nicolae Petrișor, to drive them to Târgoviște. During the trip, the Ceaușescus heard news of the revolution on the car radio (by then the revolutionaries had taken control of the state media), causing Ceaușescu to angrily denounce the revolution as a coup d'état. Petrișor took the couple to an agricultural centre near Târgoviște, where they were locked in an office and later arrested by soldiers from a local army
The Ceaușescus were executed at 2:50 p.m. local time at Military Unit UM 01417 from Târgoviște on 25 December 1989. The execution was carried out by a firing squad consisting of eight paratroop regiment soldiers brought in by two helicopters from the Boteni base: Captain Ionel Boeru, Sergeant-Major Georghin Octavian and Dorin-Marian Cîrlan, and five other non-commissioned officers who were selected from 20 volunteers.
Before the execution, Nicolae Ceaușescu declared, "We could have been shot without having this masquerade!" The Ceaușescus' hands were tied by four soldiers before the execution. Simon Sebag Montefiore wrote that Elena Ceaușescu screamed, "You sons of bitches!" as she was led outside and lined up against the wall, while Nicolae Ceaușescu began singing a fragment of "The Internationale" before the soldiers opened fire.
The firing squad began shooting as soon as the two were in position against a wall. The execution happened too quickly for the television crew assigned to the trial and death sentence to videotape it in full; only the last round of shots was filmed. In 2014, retired Captain Boeru told a reporter for The Guardian newspaper that he believes that the shots he fired from his rifle were solely responsible for the deaths of both of the Ceaușescus, because, of the three soldiers in the firing squad, he was the only one who remembered to switch his assault rifle to fire fully automatic, and at least one member of the group hesitated to shoot for several seconds. In 1990, a member of the National Salvation Front reported that 120 bullets were found in the couple's bodies.
In 1989, Prime Minister Petre Roman told French television that the execution was carried out quickly due to rumors that loyalists would attempt to rescue the couple
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