Cristian Tudor Popescu, after the femicide in Teleorman: “A lust for violence and murder floats like a bruised fog over Romania.” What solution does the journalist propose?

“We are in the first place in Europe in terms of deaths in car accidents. We are certainly also in the top when it comes to physical attacks in public, wild part-by-part battles, homicides, with the subcategories of femicide and infanticide. An appetite for violence and murder floats like a bruised fog over Romania,” commented journalist and writer Cristian Tudor Popescu on Monday, after the murder in Teleorman. In the context, he also proposes a possible solution – tightening the law.

“As for the causes, there is talk of protection orders and electronic bracelets, which might stop the aggressors. Vibrations of the air: the one determined to attack, to kill, does not stop himself from such a thing. The essential problem seems to me to be different: what inner state does the individual in question have, a state that pushes him to throw himself into the act without hesitation? Answer: the lack of fear of punishment”, said the journalist, in a text published on his Facebook page and entitled “Criminals, we see them. Who are the accomplices?”.

“No matter how terrible he commits, a range of escape solutions, which he has seen used by his predecessors, make him fearless. Stupid and grotesque word. Most of them are cowardly rascals, full of courage against women, children, old people who are easy to hit, to kill. An opponent in power, who can defend and even counterattack, spoils the pleasure of having a living body at their disposal, to do what they want, without encountering any resistance. In those moments, the motive – money misunderstandings, interfamily hatred – does not matter. What matters is the intense satisfaction of seeing the life drain from the being you hit. This is what a man who kills a woman, a child, a dog, a horse, is looking for. It's like a drug.

Cristian Tudor Popescu also refers to other problems of justice in Romania – from the flight from the country of the manele singer Dani Mocanu and the inability of the authorities to catch Emil Gânj, the man from Mures accused of killing his ex-girlfriend, and then setting fire to the house where the body was located, currently not being found, until the statute of limitations.

The journalist says he sees “a possible solution” and harshly criticizes “politicians who shy away from tightening laws”, suggesting that they “are complicit in crime”.

What else Cristian Tudor Popescu says:

• “Then, the perpetrator can flee the country, like so many others before him, the newest, the manelist Dani Mocanu, or simply hide, being undetectable by the Police, like the murderer from Mureș. If not, he hires skilled lawyers, good at poking holes in the laws. Or he directly buys a judge to set him free, “since he is not a danger”, to the horrified stupor of an entire country. Then there's the statute of limitations, which gets so many off the hook, or parole after a few years if he does end up in prison. How many murderers do you know of that are serving their 20-25 year sentences?
• Here I see a possible solution: rewrite the laws so that for serious crime of any kind, the only sentence is life imprisonment. No possibility of release along the way. Without being able to receive visits or packages. No cellmates, isolated in a few square meters. Let him know that he will effectively rot in prison until the end.
• The feeling of impunity is the psychological, individual cause. At the level of society, it is created by politicians who are afraid to tighten laws, that you never know when they also need escape gates, as well as by special and unique magistrates, who trade Justice at all levels. Would all of them be startled if they were told that they were complicit in the crimes?“

The reaction of Cristian Tudor Popescu comes in the context in which a 25-year-old woman, mother of three children, was killed by her husband in front of the youngest of them (three years old), on a street in the Teleorman commune Beciu Beciu, Teleorman county.

On Monday, the general prosecutor of Romania, Alex Florența, ordered an inspection at the Prosecutor's Office attached to the Turnu Măgurele Court in relation to the way in which the investigations were carried out in the case of the woman killed in Teleorman, respectively the events before the crime.

Previously, on September 25, the woman complained that her ex-husband kidnapped and raped her, the assaults taking place under the conditions of a temporary protection order issued by the Police. And the Romanian Police announced that it sent a control team to the Teleorman County Police Inspectorate, to investigate how the local police handled this case.