35 Facts About Ion Iliescu

Between 1996 and 2000 and from 2004 to 2008, the year in which he retired, Iliescu was a senator for the Social Democratic Party, of which he is the founder and honorary president to this day.

Ion Iliescu joined the Romanian Communist Party in 1953 and became a member of its Central Committee in 1965.

Ion Iliescu had a leading role in the Romanian Revolution, becoming the country's president in December 1989.

Ion Iliescu was the son of Alexandru Iliescu and Maria Dumitru Toma.

Ion Iliescu's mother, who was originally from Bulgaria, abandoned him when he was an infant.

Ion Iliescu remained in the USSR for the next four years and was arrested upon his return.

Ion Iliescu was imprisoned by the Romanian authorities from June 1940 to August 1944 and died in August 1945.

Ion Iliescu was raised by his stepmother and by his grandparents.

Ion Iliescu studied fluid mechanics at the Bucharest Polytechnic Institute and then as a foreign student at Moscow Power Engineering Institute.

However, years later, president Nicolae Ceausescu 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.

Ion Iliescu joined the Union of Communist Youth in 1944 and the Communist Party in 1953 - becoming a career politician from that point forward.

Ion Iliescu was nominated and elected to be the secretary of the Central Committee of the Union of Communist Youth in 1956, and later elected to the Central Committee of the Romanian Communist Party in 1965.

Ion Iliescu briefly served as the head of the Department of Propaganda, before taking the job of Minister for Youth-related Issues in 1967.

In 1972, he was pressured to resign from this job, since Ceausescu did not fully trust him and believed that Ion Iliescu would be his successor.

Ion Iliescu was demoted to vice-president of the Timis County Council, and later president of the Iasi Council.

Ion Iliescu first learned of the revolution when he noticed the Securitate was no longer tailing him.

Years later, Iliescu conceded that the trial and execution were "quite shameful, but necessary" to end the chaos that had riven the country since Ceausescu's overthrow.

Ion Iliescu later evoked the possibility of trying a "Swedish model" of social democracy and democratic socialism.

Ion Iliescu became Romania's first democratically elected head of state.

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

Ion Iliescu immediately suspended his NSDF membership; the Constitution does not allow the president to be a formal member of a political party during his term.

Ion Iliescu ran for a third time in 1996 but, stripped of media monopoly, he lost in the second round to Emil Constantinescu, his second-round opponent in 1992.

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.

Ion Iliescu began his third term on 20 December of that year, ending on 20 December 2004.

The Nastase government, which came to power in this term of Ion Iliescu, continued part of the series of reforms started by the previous governments between 1996 and 2000.

The only hard evidence published was a discussion between Gorbachev and Bulgaria's Aleksandar Lilov from 23 May 1990 in which Gorbachev says that Iliescu holds a "calculated position", and that despite sharing common views with Iliescu, Gorbachev wanted to avoid sharing this impression with the public.

Ion 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.

In December 2001, Iliescu pardoned three inmates convicted for bribery, including George Tanase, former Financial Guard head commissioner for Ialomita County.

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

Ion Iliescu was sentenced to three years and a half but was pardoned after only a couple of months.

Ion Iliescu 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 Kogalniceanu airbase from 2003 to 2005, in the context of the War on terror.

Ion Iliescu further stated that had he known of the intended use of the site, he would certainly not have approved the request.

On 8 April 2019, Ion Iliescu was officially charged with crimes against humanity Ion Iliescu's lawyer Adrian Georgescu complained that the file was illegitimate due to its lack of a prosecutor.

The trial was first postponed to February 2020 due to Ion Iliescu's declining health and the slow pace of legal proceedings.

Ion Iliescu was ranked below his predecessor Nicolae Ceausescu and the incumbent president Traian Basescu, but above Emil Constantinescu, who did not appear on the list.