Romania Senate Sets Up Inquiry Committee Into Terror Suspect Escape

Romania’s Senate Tuesday decided to set up an inquiry committee to investigate the escape of Syrian businessman Omar Hayssam, accused of masterminding the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists in Iraq in 2005.

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Imaginea articolului Romania Senate Sets Up Inquiry Committee Into Terror Suspect Escape

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The initiative received 48 votes in favor, one against and nine abstentions.

The senators also decided all files regarding Hayssam’s escape are to be declassified and put at the disposal of the inquiry committee.

Conservative Senator Marius Marinescu, initiator of the proposition, said before the Senate that, for two years, the authorities were not interested in finding the truth behind Hayssam’s escape and that they wanted to cover up the guilty parties in the case.

“It seems there are several guilty parties, dignitaries, some of them were even promoted to general, while another dignitary who turned a blind eye on Hayssam’s escape from the country runs for Bucharest mayoralty,” Marinescu said.

The inquiry committee will be formed of seven members, two social democrats and one representative for each of the other five parties in the Romanian Parliament, namely the Liberal Party, Greater Romania Party, Conservative Party, the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania and the Democratic Liberal Party.

The committee is to present the conclusion of the investigation by October 31.

Omar Hayssam, a Syrian-Romanian financier, disappeared from Romania in 2006 after a local court let him leave a prison hospital to recover at home following surgery for colon cancer.

His escape triggered the resignation of Romania's prosecutor general and of the heads of the main secret services in the country.

In 2007, a Romanian court sentenced Hayssam in absentia to 20 years in prison after finding him guilty of masterminding the kidnapping of the three journalists.

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