The State of Romania manages to prevent Romanians from sending complaints to the European Court of Human Rights with help from tricks played by the Romanian Post Office employees. Post Office no. 6 in Craiova did not send to the ECHR a complaint authored by a Romanian engineer appealing against some domestic court sentences. Stelian Dodi didn't receive the confirmation at home, which proves the complaint didn't reach the destination. The petitioner informed the Post Office officials about it. About two months later he received a card meant to convince him that the complaint had reached the ECHR. But the document was faked, as someone else had filled in the forms. Therefore the engineer addressed the Regional Post Office Department in Craiova, whose heads described the incident as minor. Moreover, the Post Office representatives insinuated it might be the fault of the French Post Administration. Had it been so, we wonder: Why did the Romanian Post Administration feel the need to fill in a card on behalf of citizen Stelian Dodi, date it back and use it? It is certain that by not sending the complaint in due time, the deadline for subscribing the case to the Strasbourg Court was up. And Romania got rid of a trial. This is not the only case of the kind. There are clues that such 'mistakes' are frequent. Romania has so far been sentenced to pay damages of 5 million Euro and there are more 9,000 petitions, as the number of Strasbourg lawsuits is growing. (...)

Silviu ALUPEI