Tudor Postelnicu (13 November 1931 – 12 August 2017) was a Romanian Communist politician, who served as Director of the Securitate from March 1978 to October 1987, and then as Interior Minister until the 1989 Revolution.
[2] From March 1978 to October 1987, Postelnicu headed the country's secret police, the Securitate, holding ministerial rank as a secretary of state.
[3] Political scientist Vladimir Tismăneanu describes him as part of a group of "deeply subservient" and "utterly incompetent" figures with whom dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu surrounded himself in the 1980s.
[3] The well-publicised proceedings have been described as a "show trial"; Postelnicu and three other prominent defendants pleaded guilty after delivering rehearsed, self-critical testimony that they later renounced.
[3] That month, a new trial began; he and eight others were charged with carrying out Ceaușescu's orders for the summary execution of three people who attempted to hijack a bus to the West in 1981.
[8] Postelnicu died at the Carol Davila Military Hospital in Bucharest in 2017,[9] following a long illness that left him attached to a ventilator near the end of his life.