Trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu
 
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| Nicolae Ceaușescu (left), President of the Socialist Republic of Romania since 1974 (and leader of the country since 1965), and his wife Elena Ceaușescu (right), were executed following a show trial on 25 December 1989. |
The trial of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu was a short trial held on 25 December 1989 by an Exceptional Military Tribunal, a drumhead court-martial created at the request of the Council of the National Salvation Front, resulting in the death sentence and execution of former Romanian President and General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena Ceaușescu.
Considered by the BBC a kangaroo court or a show trial, the main charge was genocide—namely, murdering "over 60,000 people" during the revolution in Timișoara. Other sources said the death toll is 689 or hundreds of people. Nevertheless, the charges did not affect the trial, as the verdict had been already decided before the Tribunal had been created; General Victor Stănculescu had brought with him a specially selected team of paratroopers from a crack regiment, 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.
On 22 December, during the Romanian Revolution, Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu left the Central Committee building in Bucharest by helicopter toward Snagov, from which they left soon after towards Pitești. The helicopter pilot claimed to be in danger of anti-aircraft fire, so he landed on the Bucharest–Târgoviște road, near Găești. They stopped a car driven by a certain Dr. Nicolae Decă, who took them to Văcăreşti, after which he informed the local authorities that the Ceaușescus were going toward Târgoviște. The Ceaușescus took another car and told its driver, Nicolae Petrisor, to drive them to Târgoviște. During the trip, the Ceaușescus heard news of the revolution on the car radio (by then the revolutionaries had taken control of the state media), causing Ceaușescu to angrily denounce the revolution as a coup d'etat. Petrisor took the couple to an agricultural center near Târgoviște, where the Ceaușescus were locked in an office and were later arrested by soldiers from a local army garrison.
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Wikipedia