Former Romanian regional development and tourism minister Elena Udrea spoke in the Chamber of Deputies about the harsh conditions she had to endure in police arrest. She thus tried to convince her colleagues to vote against another request of the anticorruption prosecutors to arrest her.

Udrea told her fellow MPs that the jail cell she shared with two other inmates was only 9 sqm and had bunk beds. The walls of her cell were shriveled, the windows didn’t close properly and she had to use a plastic bottle as a toilet seat to prevent the rats from coming out into her cell. “I was frisked and undressed. They even took my bra,” she said.

She added that there was no hairdryer and that she couldn’t wash her hair as she feared would catch a cold, “if not pneumonia or meningitis”.

“I thought of coming in handcuffs in front of you, so you could see and touch them, and better understand how this feels,” she said. "Preventive arrest is a form of torture that prosecutors use way too often," she concluded.

She also said that she was a target for the prosecutors and that the accusations against her were lies. She argued that she was arrested following false statements from friends and other people who just wanted to get out of police arrest.

The National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) arrested Elena Udrea on February 10. They charged her with influence peddling in a case related to the purchase of overpriced Microsoft IT licenses by public authorities. On February 17, Romania’s High Court decided to let her out of jail and placed her under house arrest.

The prosecutors then filed another request to the Chamber of Deputies asking for approval to arrest Udrea in another corruption case, related to the illegal financing of a boxing gala.

Arrest upgrade: Former Romanian minister wants to pay for her cell renovation

editor@romania-insider.com