Word: ceausescus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That, says Bucharest lawyer Nicu Teodorescu, 57, is not quite how it happened. Teodorescu, who claims he was called in at the last minute to defend the Ceausescus, told the London Times last week that the end was considerably less dramatic, if no tidier. After the trial, during which they refused to cooperate (Teodorescu tried unsuccessfully to persuade them to plead mental instability), the Ceausescus were taken into the courtyard. "It was a mere quarter-hour or so after the death sentence was pronounced," he says. "They thought they were walking to a cell, when suddenly there was a huge...
...seem to understand or accept his defeat. He raged at his judges, who were not shown on the tape, insisted that he would answer only to the "working class" and refused to address the prosecutor's charges that he had destroyed Rumania. Within a bare two hours, the Ceausescus were found guilty of genocide, with "more than 60,000 victims," and of gross abuse of the power of the state...
...barracks wall at the Boteni army camp outside Bucharest. There had been 300 volunteers for the three-man firing squad, a military spokesman who had been present said later, and the actual execution was not filmed because some of the soldiers began shooting as soon as they faced the Ceausescus...
...took charge of the country and named a transitional government until free elections, promised for April, could be held. In short order, demonstrators stormed back into the streets to oppose the inclusion of former senior party and government officials in the administration. "No more communists," they chanted, "no more Ceausescus...
Even before the Ceausescus were executed, civilians had moved to assert authority over the army as well as the country. Television, which once beamed | out only the glory of Ceausescu, then helped topple him, became the heart and voice of the new government. The National Salvation Front gathered at the studio to announce that the revolution had triumphed -- and set about trying to steer it into calmer channels. The Front ordered all those who had seized or been issued firearms to turn them in and instructed revolutionary committees that had sprung up around the country to be "immediately subordinated...