"Aiding and abetting a criminal" - a charge only brought against seven cases in one million

According to a statement issued yesterday, the judge has overruled all the objections of the three lawyers of Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu, Octavian Turcan and Alex Stoian against the preventive arrest of the three defendants, who were allowed to appeal the ruling within 24 hours, and they announced this is precisely what they are planning to do.

The statement of the judge seems to have an sarcastic undertone concerning the surprising naiveté displayed by the three defendants concerning the so-called "coded language" used in their phone conversations:

"...it would seem the defendants haven"t even seen the need to take any additional "precautions", as the methods they used to conceal their criminal activities are completely pointless, sometimes down to the point of being ridiculous", and goes on to say:

"Even though the method of changing the cellphones used would theoretically allow avoiding the surveillance of the criminal authorities, its implementation by the defendants leaves a lot to be desired, since they needed to tell each other the numbers of the new phones by texting them using the old phones, which actually defeated the purpose."

One of the arguments used by the lawyers of the defendants was the fact that they would be part of a singular case:

"The defense feels entitled to consider that, when considered generically, the crime of aiding a felon does not justify the decision of placing the defendants under arrest [...] and this case is the first where such a measure is taken", an argument which the court overruled:

"The simple fact that the defense has never encountered such a case does not make their claim that this is a unique case a valid one."

In fact, out of about 1 million cases tried by the Court of Bucharest between 2006 and 2008, only seven concerned "aiding and abetting a felon" (and we can surmise that the defendants in those cases were not under arrest during the proceedings ...).

The same charge was never brought against Ioana Maria Vlas, even though, by her own statements, she was helped to flee to Israel by none other than ...Nicolae Popa, at the request of Sorin Ovidiu Vîntu.

The Romanian legal system sure seems strange at times...