UNJR's Girbovan: It's paramount to imediatelly declassify, publish protocol between SRI, Public Prosecutor's Service

It is paramount that the protocol between the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) and the Public Prosecutor's Service (MP) be immediately declassified and published, on Sunday wrote on her Facebook page the president of the National Union of Magistrates of Romania (UNJR), Dana Girbovan.

"The fact that more and more voices demand the declassifying of 2009 Protocol inked between the SRI and the MP is a positive and necessary step to restoring trustworthiness in justice. It's been three years already since the efforts of UNJR to declassifying any secret documents that aim at the justice have remained with no positive answer from the authorities. From several public statements and interviews on this issue, to official steps to the Romanian and European bodies, reaching even court actions, the UNJR did absolutely everything depended on it, in the margins of our competence, to clear this extremely important matter for the independence of the judiciary in Romania," Girbovan wrote.

She claims "it is each public person's obligation with attributions in this field to clarify this thorny episode that has all these years affected negatively the judiciary."

"The publication of these protocols is the duty these official persons do have towards each citizen of this country, and the Constitution, too, which they swore to observe. (...) I only remind that the 2009 Protocol between the SRI and the Public Prosecutor's Service, currently secret, was completed based on a CSAT (Supreme Council of Country's Defence) decision of 2005, which is secret, too. Through these secret documents it has added to the law and against the law, thus giving the SRI agents attributions to shape "joint teams" with the prosecutors and criminal prosecution deeds, which under the law the SRI is forbidden to," Girbovan added.

The UNJR chairwoman mentions that the declassifying of the said Protocol between the SRI and the MP, is necessary to "regain the Romanians trust in justice and the intelligence services."

"Putting it otherwise, in EU's Romania with a much hailed Control and Verification Mechanism (CVM) within which the Romanian judiciary is annually "assessed", a secret Protocol was signed between criminal prosecution bodies and the intelligence services, through which the latter ones were involved in specific criminal investigation deeds, against a law in force that is forbidding them from exactly such a thing. In order to clarify all of these matters and for the justice and the intelligence services, as well to commence the process of regaining the Romanians' trustworthiness, it is paramount that the SRI-MP Protocol be declassified and published by their signatories," Girbovan wrote on her Facebook page.