In April 2018, Iliescu was charged in Romania with committing crimes against humanity by "approving military measures, some of which had an evidently diversionary character" during the deadly aftermath of the country's 1989 revolution.

According to Iliescu's own statements, his grandfather, Vasili Ivanovici, was a Russian Jew, who, being persecuted by the tsarist authorities because of his socialist views, took refuge in Romania.

[9] However, years later, president Nicolae Ceaușescu probably believed that there was a connection between the two, since during Gorbachev's visit to Romania in July 1989, Iliescu was sent outside of Bucharest to prevent any contact.

This is widely held to have meant the adoption of Perestroika-style reforms rather than the complete removal of existing institutions; it can be linked to the warm reception the new regime was given by Mikhail Gorbachev and the rest of the Soviet leadership, and the fact that the first post-revolutionary international agreement signed by Romania was with that country.

Rumours abounded for years that Iliescu and other high-ranking Party officials had been planning to overthrow Ceaușescu, but the events of December 1989 overtook them.

For instance, Nicolae Militaru, the new regime's first Defense Minister, said that Iliescu and others had planned to take Ceaușescu prisoner in February 1990 while he was out of the capital.

[14] The National Salvation Front (FSN) subsequently decided to organize itself as a party and participate in the 1990 general election—the first free election held in the country in 53 years–with Iliescu as its presidential candidate.

Progressively, the Front lost its character as a national government or generic coalition, and became vulnerable to criticism for using its appeal as the first institution involved in power sharing, while engaging itself in political battles with forces that could not enjoy this status, nor the credibility.

Under the pressure of the events that led to the Mineriads, his political stance has veered with time: from a proponent of Perestroika, Iliescu recast himself as a Western European social democrat.

The main debate around the subject of his commitment to such ideals is linked to the special conditions in Romania, and especially to the strong nationalist and autarkic attitude visible within the Ceaușescu regime.

Nevertheless, Iliescu conceded defeat within hours of polls closing, making him the only incumbent president to lose a bid for re-election since the end of Communism.

The center-right was severely defeated during the 2000 elections due largely to public dissatisfaction with the harsh economic reforms of the previous four years as well as the political instability and infighting of the multiparty coalition.

On 13 June, an attempt of the authorities to remove from the square around 100 protesters, which had remained in the street even after the May elections had confirmed Iliescu and the FSN, resulted in attacks against several state institutions, such as the Ministry of Interior, the Bucharest Police Headquarters and the National Television.

Iliescu issued a call to the Romanian people to come and defend the government, prompting several groups of miners to descend on the capital, armed with wooden clubs and bats.

They trashed the University of Bucharest, some newspaper offices and the headquarters of opposition parties, claiming that they were havens of decadence and immorality – drugs, firearms and munitions, "an automatic typewriter", and fake currency.

The June 1990 Mineriad in particular was widely criticized both at home and internationally, with one historian (Andrei Pippidi) comparing the events to Nazi Germany's Kristallnacht.

"[29] In 1992, three years after the revolution which overthrew the Communist dictatorship, the Romanian government allowed King Michael I to return to his country for Easter celebrations, where he drew large crowds.

[32] In December 2001, Iliescu pardoned three inmates convicted for bribery, including George Tănase, former Financial Guard head commissioner for Ialomița County.

[33] Iliescu had to revoke Tănase's pardon a few days later due to the media outcry, claiming that "a legal adviser was superficial in analyzing the case".

[38] Most controversial of all, on 15 December 2004, a few days before the end of his last term, Iliescu pardoned 47 convicts, including Miron Cozma, the leader of the miners during the early 1990s, who had been sentenced in 1999 to 18 years in prison in conjunction with the September 1991 Mineriad.

[39] In the last days of his president mandate, he awarded the Order of the Star of Romania (rank of ceremonial knighthood) to the controversial, nationalist politician Corneliu Vadim Tudor, a gesture which drew criticism in the press and prompted Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, fifteen Radio Free Europe journalists, Timișoara mayor Gheorghe Ciuhandu, songwriter Alexandru Andrieș, and historian Randolph Braham to return their Romanian honours in protest.

He was identified as one of the people who authorized or at least knew about and should stand accountable for the operation of a CIA black site at Mihail Kogălniceanu airbase from 2003 to 2005,[41] in the context of the War on terror.

[42] In 2016, a previously closed legal case regarding crimes against humanity committed by the interim government headed by Iliescu during the Romanian Revolution was reopened.

[citation needed] By 2017, military prosecutors had alleged that the events of 1989 were orchestrated by a misinformation campaign on the part of Iliescu's government, which were disseminated through broadcasting media.

[45] Iliescu was charged for his alleged role in the killing of 862 people during the revolution, at which time he headed the National Salvation Front (FSN) interim government, as well as the spreading of misinformation.

The initial charges, brought forward in 2005, were shortly dropped, until 2014 when the European Court of Human Rights found Iliescu's lack of investigation into the events of Mineriad to be in violation of human rights to life, freedom from inhumane, and degrading treatment and demonstration, and again in 2015, when the Military Prosecutor's Section within the Prosecutor's Office and the Justice Office reopened investigations into the Mineriad protests, accusing Iliescu, along with other accused perpetrators, of coordinating a general and systematic attack against the civilian population during the events from 13 until 15 June 1990 in Bucharest.