The Last Days of the Ceaușescus

Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were executed following trial on 25 December 1989 in Târgoviște, Romania. The trial was conducted by an Extraordinary Military Tribunal, a drumhead court-martial created at the request of a newly formed group called the National Salvation Front. Its outcome was predetermined, and it resulted in guilty verdicts and death sentences for former Romanian President and General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party Nicolae Ceaușescu, and his wife, Elena Ceaușescu. The main charge was genocide. Romanian state television announced that Nicolae Ceaușescu had been responsible for the deaths of 60,000 people; the announcement did not make clear whether this was the number killed during the Romanian revolution in Timișoara or throughout the 24 years of Ceaușescu's rule. Nevertheless, the charges did not affect the trial. General Victor Stănculescu had brought with him a specially selected team of paratroopers, handpicked earlier in the morning to act as a firing squad. Before the legal proceedings began, Stănculescu had already selected the spot where the execution would take place: along one side of the wall in the barracks' square. Nicolae Ceaușescu refused to recognize the tribunal, arguing its lack of constitutional basis and claiming that the revolutionary authorities were part of a Soviet plot. His refusal to recognize the tribunal did not prevent the firing squad from carrying out the sentence immediately, on the same day as the trial.