Intelligence Service's Hellvig: Idea that in 2022 services could return to former Securitate model is wrong

The head of SRI, Eduard Hellvig, describes as "totally wrong" the idea that, in 2022, the intelligence services in Romania could return to the model of the former political police Securitate.

"It is a totally wrong idea that, in 2022, the Romanian intelligence services could return to the model of the former Securitate, because that model (...) belonged to the totalitarian communist regime, a regime universally recognized as criminal, imposed by a foreign power and totally opposed to a society that wants freedom, prosperity and security," Hellvig told an online press conference on Friday.

In his opinion, the Securitate was "a creator of mentalities" and "an administrator with a coercive role against consciences."

And what I mean when I say Securitate is more than a repressive institution. It was an institution that created mentalities, corrected behaviours, an absolute judge and a manager of consciences. The laboratories of Securitate were abandoned in a hurry in December 1989, but the viruses that were developed there were already deeply rooted in our society. A virus like that, and the most dangerous of all, I believe, is the main method of the former political police, which is represented by the idea of using the traumas of the society during the communist regime to very smartly create a reflex of a totalitarian type. It is the idea that behind everything lies an obscure and necessarily malicious interest, that there are enemies inside Romania, enemies with whom we need to fight. The ability to present itself as a medicine is, in fact, the virus itself," said the SRI head.