Outrageous case of Romanian who Died after Prison Hunger Strike

Claudiu Curlic was arrested in Sept. 2007 in Krakow. He was falsely accused of stealing a wallet. The theft has occured a few months earlier but police had a description of the thieve; the pickpocket's victim turned out to be a judge.

The problem is that Claudiu, a Romanian citizen who's family is in Italy and girlfriend in Krakow, wasn't anywhere near Krakow on the date of the theft. He was on a bus on his way to Italy.

Curlic told the police that he couldn't have been the thief since he was on the bus. He gave details of the bus company's name. The police contacted the company and asked if it was true that he got on the bus to Italy the day before the crime. The bus company answered YES. Despite this, Curlic was held in jail.

Curlic demanded that the police get a copy of the ticket and attach it to his case file. When they didn't, he went on hunger strike. He died on Jan. 18, FOUR MONTHS INTO THE STIKE.

It seems quite outrageous, but the authorities must have been trying to cover the whole thing up. It is not clear how the information got out, but last week the press got hold of the story. This week, the weekly paper Tygodnik Powszechny published the findings of their investigation. They talked to the prison doctor and people at the bus company.

As it turns out, after the bus company answered the police inquiry, there was no follow-up questions or visit to them. Surely they had no way of imagining what situation Claudiu was in. The weekly paper spoke to the woman who was working on the bus that day. She normally worked on the bus to Italy and says that she remembered Claudiu as having travelled numerous times on that route. The names of the passengers are on the tickets and the bus company circles the names of the passengers when they get on - and they had the list. The woman remembered seeing him and even remembered he was the only passenger from Krakow that night. By the look of it, he was most likely on the bus, far away from Poland when the incident occured.

What's worse is that the prison authorities apparently didn't care that the guy was on a hunger strike! Four months is an extremely long time to be on a strike. He was brought into the prison doctor, not one month, not two months into the strike, but ONE WEEK before he died. But even then, the doctor was not allowed by the authorities to transfer him into a hospital. It looks like the authorities intended to see the guy die - but in the end, didn't want to have any investigation, so they let him out and brought him to the hospital just right before he died. By that time he was already way beyond saying. Amazingly, the prison authorities claimed that it was his own choice to die.