Romanian jailed as a dissident

Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu, 80, once jailed as a Romanian communist-era “enemy of the state,” died Friday at his home in Bucharest two weeks after he was released from a hospital where he was being treated for liver disease, national news agency Agerpres reported.

After communist rule ended in 1989 with the overthrow and execution of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Dumitrescu was elected to parliament, where he fought as a senator for the exclusion of former communists from public life.

He helped draft laws that led to the publication of the millions of files of the feared Securitate secret police.

Dumitrescu was sentenced in 1949 to 27 years in prison for being an enemy of the state. From 1949 to 1964, he was incarcerated in communist jails or kept under house arrest.

After he was released, he was not allowed to practice his profession as a lawyer; he was forced to work in construction, a typical career for former dissidents.

He retired from the Senate in 2000 and in May published his memoirs, “Witness and Document,” detailing his time in a communist gulag. He was also chairman of the Assn. of Former Political Prisoners.

He was widely praised for his role in helping Romania move on from its difficult past, particularly as ex-communists continued to rule the country until 2004.