Plane Crash Inquiry

The inquiry into last months plane crash in the Apuseni Mountains may also involve cabinet ministers

Bogdan Matei, 05.02.2014, 13:21

Two people were killed and five injured when a small plane crashed on the 20th of January in the Apuseni Mountains. The aircraft was carrying a group of doctors specialising in transplant surgery and crashed from 1,600 m in a wooded area, in bad weather. The pilot and a young doctor were killed, while the co-pilot and four other doctors were injured. Search and rescue operations started too late and ended seven hours after the crash. The delay with which the relevant state institutions responded has been harshly criticised. A number of resignations were announced a few days after the accident, including that of the country’s interior minister Radu Stroe and one of his state secretaries, as well as the head of the General Inspectorate for Emergency Situations and the director general and operations director of the body responsible for air traffic control.

Prime minister Victor Ponta has also unsuccessfully called for the resignation of the head of the Special Telecommunications Service, Marcel Opris. Meanwhile, prosecutors in Alba county, where the tragedy occurred, started an inquiry, inspecting the site of the accident and hearing the victims and the people involved in the rescue operations. At some point during their investigations, however, they said they were no longer competent to deal with the matter, because they were not authorised to interview employees of military and central bodies responsible for managing emergency situations.

The investigation was therefore taken over by the department within the General Prosecutor’s Office responsible for military cases. “The emergency groups set up to deal with the accident were coordinated by persons from the cabinet”, explained the general prosecutor with the Court of Appeal in Alba Iulia, Augustin Lazar. According to some voices, the cabinet ministers in question are the transport and health ministers and the former interior minister. Parliament has initiated the procedure for passing a new law to regulate the activity of the Special Telecommunications Service. Currently subordinated to the president, this service may in the future become a specialised department of the interior ministry and be run by a state secretary appointed by the minister. The initiators of the new law argue these changes are needed in order to improve the management of emergency situations in Romania.