DEATH By Firing Squad, President and Wife Executed - Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu , ROMANIA

Nicolae Ceaușescu, (26 January 1918 – 25 December 1989), was a Romanian Communist politician. He was Secretary General of the Romanian Communist Party from 1965 to 1989, and as such was the country's second and last Communist leader. He was also the country's head of state from 1967 to 1989.

His rule was marked in the first decade by an open policy towards Western Europe and the United States, which deviated from that of the other Warsaw Pact states during the Cold War.  He continued a trend first established by his predecessor, Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, who had tactfully coaxed the Soviet Union into withdrawing its troops from Romania in 1958.

Ceaușescu's second decade was characterized by an increasingly brutal and repressive regime—by some accounts, the most rigidly Stalinist regime in the Soviet bloc. It was also marked by an ubiquitous personality cult, nationalism and a deterioration in foreign relations with the Western powers as well as the Soviet Union. Ceaușescu's government was overthrown in the December 1989 revolution, and he and his wife were executed following a televised and hastily organised two-hour court session.  They were charged and convicted of genocide and undermining the national economy among a series of other offences.

 
Death

Nicolae Ceaușescu flees Bucharest
by helicopter on 22 December 1989
Pic by wiki user Mazarin07

Ceaușescu and his wife Elena fled the capital with Emil Bobu and Manea Mănescu and headed, by helicopter, for Ceaușescu's Snagov residence, from where they fled again, this time for Târgoviște. Near Târgoviște they abandoned the helicopter, having been ordered to land by the army, which by that time had restricted flying in Romania's airspace. The Ceaușescus were held by the police while the policemen listened to the radio. They were eventually turned over to the army. On Christmas Day, 25 December, the two were tried in a brief show-trial and sentenced to death by a military court on charges ranging from illegal gathering of wealth to genocide, and were executed in Târgoviște. During the trial, Ceaușescu repeatedly denied the court's authority to try him, and asserted he was still legally president of Romania. The video of the trial shows that, after sentencing, they had their hands tied behind their backs and were led outside the building to be executed.

The Ceaușescus were executed by a firing squad consisting of elite paratroop regiment soldiers: Captain Ionel Boeru, Sergant-Major Georghin Octavian and Dorin-Marian Cirlan while reportedly hundreds of others also volunteered. The firing squad began shooting as soon as they were in position against a wall. The firing happened too soon for the film crew covering the events to record it.  Before his sentence was carried out, Nicolae Ceaușescu sang "The Internationale" while being led up against the wall. After the shooting, the bodies were covered with canvas. The hasty show trial and the images of the dead Ceaușescus were videotaped and the footage promptly released in numerous western countries. Later that day, it was also shown on Romanian television.

The Ceaușescus were the last people to be executed in Romania before the abolition of capital punishment on 7 January 1990.
Their graves are located in Ghencea cemetery in Bucharest. They are buried on opposite sides of a path. The graves themselves are unassuming, but they tend to be covered in flowers and symbols of the regime. Some allege that the graves do not, in reality, contain their bodies. As of April 2007, their son Valentin has lost an appeal for an investigation into the matter. Upon his death in 1996, the elder son, Nicu, was buried nearby in the same cemetery. According to Jurnalul Național, requests were made by the Ceaușescus' daughter Zoia and by supporters of their political views to move their remains to mausoleums or to purpose-built churches. These have been denied by the government. On 21 July 2010, forensic scientists exhumed the bodies of Nicolae and Elena to perform DNA tests.  Later it was determined that they were indeed the remains of Nicolae and Elena.



(See video under Real Deaths Captured On Film)


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