Andrei Ivanţoc

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Andrei Ivanţoc (b. 1961, Opaci, Raionul Căuşeni) is a Moldovan politician.

He was among the four leaders (the Ilie Ilaşcu group, comprising also Alexandru Leşco and Tudor Petrov Popa) of the Tiraspol branch of the pro-Romanian Christian-Democratic People's Party of Moldova who were accused of terrorism by the Russian-supported separatist regime of Transnistria. The four were pro-Romanian unionists opposing the separatist government in Tiraspol. Ivanţoc was arrested on 2 June 1992 by Russia's 14th Army^{[citation needed]} stationed in Moldova, and sentenced to 15 years of prison in a trial, which the European Court of Human Rights considered to be unfairly conducted by the separatist authorities. On 9 December 1993, the Supreme Court of Transnistria found Ivanţoc guilty of murdering a representative of the State with the aim of spreading terror, unauthorised use and theft of ammunition or explosives, and assault. He was set free on 2 June 2007^[1]. He was maltreated and beaten by the "separatist police" in front of the OSCE members at custom.^[2] ^[3]

The trials in 1993 were considered by human rights groups to be unfair as the accused were allegedly tortured and forced to sign imaginary confessions.^{[citation needed]} In 2004 the OSCE and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg have ruled that Transnistria and Russia should end his detention as well as the detention of the other inmates still held by the Trasnistrian government ^[4].

Ivanţoc became a Romanian citizen in 2001 while in prison, and in March 2005, he was proposed by the Social Liberal Party as a candidate for the position of President of Moldova. On 27 February 2006, he started a hunger strike in protest against the "abusive, inhuman and degrading treatment" he was receiving from the Transnistrian authorities.

On June 2, 2007 Ivanţoc was released by Transnistrian auto-proclaimed authorities, after pressures of the international community. When he was released he tried to run back in Transnistria and was captured and beaten by the Transnistrian security forces ^[5], then forced to abandon Transnistria and declared persona non-grata ^[6].