Ex-labour camp boss accused of crimes against humanity for 115 deaths

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• published: 31 Jul 2015
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A Romanian agency has accused the former commander of a labour camp of crimes against humanity for the deaths of 115 political prisoners. The Institute for the Investigation of Communist Crimes on Tuesday handed a file to prosecutors detailing allegations against Florian Cormos, commander of the Cernavoda labour camp. Institute chief Andrei Muraru said there was "clear evidence" that Cormos imposed a "regime of extermination" with the aim of physically annihilating the opponents of the regime and those considered socially indesirable. The institute said that under Cormos' command, between December 1952 to April 1953, inmates allegedly were electrocuted and horses were ridden over them. Prisoners died of starvation, pneumonia, gangrene, a lack of medicine, disease from drinking water from the Danube River, and one prisoner froze to death. The youngest to die was 20 and the oldest was 66. "They were dying at a rate of one a day," Muraru said at a news conference in Bucharest. There are believed to be no survivors among those held at Cernavoda at the time. Cormos, 87, denies wrongdoing. He told The Associated Press that the communist regime sentenced him to three years in prison after which he was appointed to a job at another prison. But, according to the Institute, Cormos was only sentenced because his cruelty became too visible and there was a danger of it being seen in the West. Cormos is the third former commander of a communist prison or labour camp accused of causing deaths and torturing political prisoners. A fourth former prison commander identified by the institute died in November before he could be accused. Historians say more than half a (M) million political prisoners were held in Romania in the 1950s and 1960s, and more than 100-thousand died. About 35-hundred former Romanian political prisoners from the 1950s and 1960s are still alive, far fewer than the 40-thousand who were alive when Communism was overthrown in 1989. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/b92c210467f88c13d10e9ca7ffe9a869 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork