CHISINAU, October 15. /TASS/. Head of the Gagauz Autonomy Evghenia Gutsul has said that Moldovan authorities are using imprisonment as a form of torture to break her spirit.
"All the conditions of my imprisonment, bias, and pressure amount to one thing: I was deliberately placed in Jail No. 13. The authorities knew perfectly well that the ECHR (the European Court of Human Rights - TASS) considers this place incompatible with human dignity. They are using the imprisonment itself as torture. Their goal is to break me and, through me, the will of entire Gagauzia. But they will be disappointed. My spirit, much like the spirit of our people, cannot be broken," she said in an interview with TASS. The text was provided by her lawyers.
A court hearing in Gutsul’s case was held on August 5. She was found guilty of violating the law in financing the opposition Sor party and sent to Jail No. 13 in Chisinau. The court also revoked her right to be a member of any political party for five years and fined her $2.4 million, which, according to the investigation, was used to fund the party. The politician strongly rejected all accusations and said that her case had been politicized while her attorneys submitted an appeal to the Chisinau Court of Appeal. Gutsul said that the Party of Action and Solidarity, which controls Moldova’s parliament and government, is behind the lawsuit.
Earlier, Moldovan businessman Veaceslav Platon won a case at the ECHR which recognized the conditions of his jail term in the same prison, where he was held from 2016 to 2020, as inhumane. The court established that Moldova had violated Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (prohibition of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment), Article 13 (right to an effective legal remedy) and Article 8 (right to respect for private life). According to the court decision, Moldova must pay Platon 15,600 euros in moral damages and 2,000 euros for court expenses.