Nicolae Purcărea was arrested in May 1949, a few days after the capturing of the group of partisans that he had temporarily left.

Put through a brief but violent investigation carried out at the headquarters of the Securitate (the secret police) in Pitești, he was transferred to Craiova, where he was trialed and sentenced to seven years of forced labor.

The number of people detained and sentenced for political reasons between 1944-1959, according to a Ministry of the Interior internal statistic.

THE SECURITATE

The General Directorate for the Security of the People ('Securitate') was created on the 30th of August 1948, initially headed by NKVD agents. Nicknamed 'the armed hand of the Party', it had an essential contribution to the communist government's consolidating its power.

The number of Securitate agents increased from around 5,000 in 1948 to 14,259 in December 1989. Additionally, there were 150,000 people that were part of the Securitate troops, which effectively annihilated armed resistance groups and repressed peasants opposing collectivization.

An important role in the activity of the Securitate was played by its network of tens of thousands of informers.