The judgment is not final and will be challenged by the Ursu family’s legal representatives, the victim’s son, Andrei Ursu, told BIRN in a telephone interview from the US.

“This is outrageous,” said Ursu, who attributed the acquittal to “corruption in the justice system.”

“We had overwhelming evidence [for a conviction],” he added.

The two former Securitate officers consistently maintained their innocence. In his court testimony, Hodis claimed that secret police interrogations were conducted in the 1980s with “attention and respect for the law”.

By then, he said, the communist regime had abandoned the incorrect practices of the past and was promoting a more “humanist socialism”.

The trial started three years ago, after a long pursuit of justice on the part of Andrei Ursu. During this time, he went twice on hunger strike and denounced attempts to obstruct the application of justice to former Securitate officers, some of whom still hold positions of power in Romania, mostly in the secret service.

He said he was convinced that “the accused and their men from the former Securitate have influenced the decision in one way or another”.

The infamous communist-era political police played a crucial role in the survival of the regime for more than four decades.