Rehabilitation of war criminals in post-Communist Romania

The rehabilitation process was part of the general efforts made by Romania to distance itself from its Communist past, as those convicted were sentenced after the country fell under Soviet influence in the wake of World War II.

However, as a former Axis country during the Second World War, these rehabilitation initiatives put Romania at odds with the West (the United States in particular), as the former was seeking to join NATO and EU.

An ardent pro-fascist and admirer of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, he was vice-president of the National Christian Party and then Antonescu's Minister of Propaganda.

His acquittal was insisted upon due to the briefness of his term as Undersecretary of State in the National Economy Ministry (5 April to 26 May 1941) as well as the fact that he resigned before 30 June 1941, the date of the Iași pogrom.

[10] Ion Pănescu, commander of the Chernivtsi Airport during World War II, was convicted in 1950 for using the regime of Jewish slave labor to his own advantage.

That same year, the "extraordinary appeal" procedure - which was used to irreversibly acquit the previously-mentioned war criminals - was eliminated from the Romanian legislation following recommendations from the European Court of Human Rights.

When, in February 2004, Zuroff demanded that the Romanian authorities overturn the rehabilitations of Colonels Radu Dinulescu and Gheorghe Petrescu, he was informed that this was "technically impossible".