Italian TV crew locked in room by anti-vaccine senator and then detained by police

On 13 December 2021, a reporter and her crew working for Italian public broadcaster RAI were detained in a Bucharest police station for several hours on Monday 13 December after an anti-vaccine Romanian Senator kept them locked up inside her office during an interview. Italian journalist Lucia Goracci and her crew from Tg1 were detained after the alleged attack by the husband of Senator Diana Iovanovici Sosoaca, after the Senator blocked the crew from leaving her office. During her interview by Goracci, the far-right senator became angry and decided to lock the TV crew in her office and called the police. The tension culminated with the intervention of the police in Şoşoacă’s office. The Italian journalists accused the Romanian police officers not protecting them. They said they managed to leave Şoşoacă’s office only due to the intervention of the Italian Embassy in Bucharest. Goracci was searched and questioned by the Romanian policemen. The TV crew was allowed to leave the police station only after eight hours. Goracci filed a complaint with the 4th police station in Bucharest against Senator Diana Şoşoacă, claiming that she was sequestered in Sosoaca’s office and that the senator’s husband, Dumitru-Silvestru Şoşoacă, bit her hand. Şoşoacă was heard at the Prosecutor’s Office, being also accused of attacking a police officer amid the incident with the Italian journalists. He was placed under a judicial control for 60 days. The Romanian Government issued a statement, strongly condemning “any act of intimidation of journalists or obstruction of the right to free information of citizens. (…) Prime Minister Nicolae-Ionel Ciuca considers this incident unacceptable and categorically rejects the manifestation of differences of opinion through violence”.