Sfarsitul dictatorilor
The Dictators’ End

Summary/Abstract: Sixteen years after the overthrow of the Communist regime, justice is still a problematic domain in Romania’s joining the EU. The opposition to reform within the magistracy gives the measure of the distortions inherited from Communism. Could Ceausescu have been tried justly instead of being killed after a summary and embarrassing trial? Was at that time a bench capable of guaranteeing a just trial, was legislation existing at that time capable of ensuring such a trial, could the prosecutors and the defending counsels have gathered all the necessary proofs to ensure it? In retrospect, it is clear that none of those who took the power after 1989 would have favored such a trial. Only a process of Communism could have revealed the true responsibilities, as it happened at Nuernberg with those responsible for the Nazi regime. Romania is not the only country where the former totalitarian regime and its leader have not been brought to trial. It is a proof that a judicial system recently liberated from dictatorship cannot dictators without an external intervention, a situation that rises new problems, such as the fact that the dictators may be perceived as martyrs by some of their co-nationals. Nevertheless, in a country where both the society and the institutions have reached a political maturity (see Chile), such a trial is possible and the victims of the former dictatorship may hope that justice will be done. These are the basic ideas on which the author structures her analysis of Ceausescu’s, Milosevic’s, Pinochet’s and Saddam Hussein;s trials, pointing out the specific differences and similarities. Mentions are also made of Khieu Sampan, Honecker, Pol Pot.

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