Unlawful listening-in

A LISTENING DEVICE WAS FOUND IN THE HOME OF A JOURNALIST OF HUNGARIAN NATIONALITY OF KÉZDIVÁSÁRHELY
(ROMANIAN: TÂRGU SECUIESC) IN TRANSYLVANIA, ROMANIA

Unlawful listening-in!

In the presence of eyewitnesses, on the afternoon of December 20, 1999, István Iochom found a listening device in his home. He is a journalist of the Hungarian language daily newspaper "Háromszék" [http://www.3szek.ro] from Kézdivásárhely (Romanian: Târgu Secuiesc). The device that was connected to the phonelines was probably placed in 1993 during the changing of a doorframe. István Iochom seems to recognize a connection between the 1993 break-in into his home and the listening-in into his home. The attorney general of the Kovászna District (Romanian: Covasna) [http://www.haromszek.ro/covasna_e.htm] excluded the possibility of a legal listening-in.

István Iochom who lives in an apartment on fourth floor of the Nicolaie Balcescu Street, attributes to his "luck" the detection of the miniature microphone connected to the end of twelve meters long thin wires. The employees of Romtelecom phone company faced a technical difficulty while trying to install the telephone in the neighbour's apartment, while attempting to troubleshoot, they discovered foreign origin (unauthorized) wires attached to the telephone cables. These wires lead directly to the oak-doorframe of the journalist. In the corridor leading to Iochom's apartment the wires were hidden in the brick wall, plastered and painted over. Only the very end of a tiny microphone was protruding from the doorframe; the device got its electricity from the telephone wires, and the signals were probably sent via those as well.

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The whole affair had noteworthy precedents: on December 1989, when the enraged mob destroyed then set ablaze the building of the Militia (communist Police) of Kézdivásárhely, the archives of the Securitate (notorious communist era secret police) were ransacked as well. A good part of the files were destroyed during the upheaval, (perhaps not accidentally), but a couple of interesting documents fell into the hands of István Iochom. He then wrote some exciting articles based on their contents, in the Székely Újság (Székely News).

The Székely Újság was started in the revolutionary enthusiasm which is since then defunct. The articles, which were dealing with the demeanour and methods of the Securitate as well as of the informator agents, caused uneasy feelings among many people. The author of these articles received numerous threatening telephone calls. According to eyewitnesses on December 14, 1994, two casually dressed strangers drove up to the front of the building, intruded in the apartment and left with several kilograms worth of documents.

According to Iochom, the intruders were sure of themselves, they must have known that nobody will be at home at the time of the theft. István Iochom declared to our newspaper: "That morning I phoned the newspaper and I told them that I was going to Kövár. They also must have known that my wife's workday ended only in the afternoon. The perpetrators ransacked only one cupboard and removed nothing but the documents related to the Securitate. They could have taken these documents earlier during the placement of the listening device, but they probably did not want to attract any attention until they found out what was that I knew or what were my intentions." Reporting the theft to the police was followed by a superficial but lengthy investigation that lasted for two years. The only finding of the investigation was that the perpetrators did not use a picklock for entering into the apartment. The police then asked the district attorney to close permanently the case no. 1093/ P/1996, "because no criminal act happened" By doing this, they revealed in fact that what had happened here was a secret service action. We could guess only the date when the listening device was installed; the Iochoms had changed their doors and windows in 1993, and it is probable that they received a "prepared" doorframe.

We could not find the carpenter who made the doors, but we found out that the police caught him driving without a licence, and that he wasn't ever prosecuted. Numerous times, following the replacement of the doors, the neighbours told the Iochoms that during the mornings suspicious noises could be heard from the apartment. Although they repeteadly searched the rooms they could not find any microphone.

The fourty three years old journalist native of Transylvania city of Déva (Romanian: Deva), gave already numerous headaches to the "police" and the "authorities", as, only this year he published two such books which deservedly raised the eyebrows of the "authorities". The books titled "The Haunting Past of Seklerland" dealing with the notorious Agache-affair, and "Handgun in the Olt River" were published by the Székely Hírmondó Publishing House. The latter book tells about the past dealings of the Securitate and of its successor the SRI, and about the latest abuses of the present days police. One can see that the Secret Service had a strong reason for keeping an eye on the journalist, if one could qualify as wrongdoing sheding light on the many abuses. Attorney General Tripan who, since November 15, 1999, leads the Kovászna County Attorney's Department, told our newspaper that neither him nor his deputy gave any permission for listening-in into István Iochom's conversations. He also said that on principle his predecessor Attila Lupinger could have ordered this, but that would have been absurd. They appear not to know anything about this case at the secret service's (SRI) county office as well. Colonel Ovidiu Iordache, chief of SRI's public relations office is of the opinion that private persons could have installed as well the listening devices into István Iochom's home. The SRI even notified the public earlier about such incidents through fly-bills. Colonel Iordache stated that they uncovered incidents when social gatherings and programmes of the Hungarian community were monitored unauthorizedly. At the time of printing this article, the newspaper "Krónika" did not receive official response promised by the spokesman of the SRI.

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SELECTIONS FROM THE BOOK "HANDGUN IN THE RIVER OLT" WRITTEN BY ISTVÁN IOCHOM

Before December 22, 1989, seven SECURITATE officers were looking after the "security" of the Romanian state in the city of Kézdivásárhely http://linux.cosys.ro/kezdi/ by keeping a keen eye day in and day out over the correspondence and telephone conversations of the locals. Maybe you wonder who were they? The seven SECURITATE officers were: Captain Aurel Mureşan the commander of the local SECURITATE, Liutenant Ioan Pascan, Liutenant Traian Laslău, Liutenant Valentin Stângă, Sergeant-major Tibor Domokos, and Sergeant-major Stelian Boros. The responsibilities of the last two officers were the telephone tappings.

These seven people were checking up on the people, companies and institutions of the city populated with twenty-three thousand inhabitants. Their responsibility also included overseing the ten neighbouring villages. One might righfully ask - how were they capable of doing such a "superhuman" effort? The answer is simple: they were pupeteering an army of collaborants. A well-built network of informators was obliging their commands. The tapping-in methods (in Romanian T.O. or "Tipuri de Observare" meaning Types of Observation) were regulated by the order # 001456 of the Ministry of the Interior.

See the main six TOs below (abbreviation, Romanian meaning, English translation):

I.C.T. = “interceptarea convorbirilor telefonice” (phone tapping)
I.C.D.T. = “interceptarea convorbirilor şi discuţiilor din cameră, mijlocul T. se incorporează în telefon” (listening-in of talks from the room through a microphone built into the phone set);
I.D.M. = “interceptarea discuţiilor cu ajutorul microfonului, independent de telefon, lucrat direct în perete” (listening-in of talks from the room through a microphone built into the wall, independently of the phone. N.B.: this is the method used in Iochom's case);
I.D.E..B. = “interceptarea discuţiilor cu ajutorul emiţătorului la baterie” (listening-in by a battery powered transmitter, hidden in various objects, furniture pieces);
I.D.E.R. = “interceptarea discuţiilor cu emiţător la reţea” (listening-in through a transmitter connected to the electrical power supply);
I.C.H. = “interceptarea discuţiilor în hoteluri” (listening-in of conversations from hotel rooms).

In their listening-room they could simultaneously tapp-in and tape twenty telephone-lines. Those they found most interesting were translated from Hungarian into Romanian and given on half-page format notes to their SECURITATE comrades.

OTHER ILLEGAL TAPPINGS

On October 24, 1995, a telephone serviceman found a listening-in device in the Fehér County (Romanian: Alba) headquarters of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR) http://www.rmdsz.ro/ . The microphone must have been hidden into the walls in the year 1993, when they renovated the headquarters while they exchanged the old telephone lines into new ones. On October 26, 1996, Gyula Brendus local DAHR president wrote an official letter to the District Attorney's Office, asking for an inquiry in the matter. A couple of days later Senator Tibor Incze interpellated in the Senate, asking also for an inquiry. The official transcript dated June 15, 1996 of the District Attorney's Office from Gyulafehérvár (Romanian: Alba Iulia), stated that according to the investigation, "the foreign object" was installed in the walls prior to 1990. On November 20, 1996, the Attorney General Emil Stroe in a statement made to the local newspaper Unirea declared that given the ancientness and obsoleteness of the matter, the case was shelved.
On the first of November 1995, István Csutak the manager of the Cultural Center of Csíkszereda [http://clmc.topnet.ro/] (Romanian: Miercurea Ciuc), found a listening device in his home. The device was linked to a telephone cable. His telephone line was just connected a couple of weeks earlier. Csutak called for a "news conference" in his home. He presented the device and its technical parameters to the journalists given the fact that he also happens to be an Electrical Engineer. Following this scandalous incident, Imre András MP presented an interpellation in the Parliament. The manager of the Postal Services made a written declaration saying that István Csutak is not sufficiently qualified to be able to establish whether the found object is indeed a listening device or not.
Another listening device was found in 1997, in the office of Rákosi Zoltán at the Kovászna County School-Inspectorate. The official position of SRI was that the listening device was installed before December 1989. (They themselves only conveniently left it there?!)
In Szatmárnémeti (Romanian: Satu Mare) on the May 7, 1999, during the conference get-together held for the school-inspectors responsible for Hungarian language education they found a listening device. The [Romanian] under-secretary of state József Kötő [who is of Hungarian nationality] organized the event. During the get-together the listening device fell into the lap of one of the participants. The battery-operated device was to be secured under the table by a suction cup. The organizers of the event surrendered the listening device to the local police which sent it further to the Temesvár (Romanian: Timisoara) offices of the SRI. There was no official response received since.

ÁRPÁD GAZDA, KOCSIS KÁROLY

(From "Krónika", a Hungarian language newspaper published in Romania -
December 22, 1999, No. 46.)

The Agache case

Related to the events during the Revolution from December 1989 and the Agache case, let's see a contrasting opinion, expressed by Agache Aurel-Dionisie, son of the former Milita officer Agache Aurel. See here the Agache case (in Romanian).

Details of the Agache case (in Hungarian) as described by Iochom István in his book entitled Kisírt a múlt Székelyföldön -- Az úgynevezett Agache-ügy története.