Romanian prosecutors said Friday that they have widened their probe into deadly violence that followed the country's 1989 revolution to include ex-premier Petre Roman alongside other former top officials.
In addition to ex-president Ion Iliescu who is already under investigation, Roman, his deputy Gelu Voican Voiculescu and former intelligence chief Virgil Magureanu are among 32 people who will now be investigated, prosectors said.
They are being probed for alleged "crimes against humanity" and for allegedly organising "a general and systematic attack against... demonstrators," military prosecutor Marian Lazar said in a statement.
Romania's 1989 revolution was the bloodiest in eastern Europe.
In December 1989, 162 people died before the fall of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and 942 in the days following, according to historical accounts which still remain unclear.
This investigation focuses on events several months later, in June 1990, when a demonstration in Bucharest was violently broken up by the military, the intelligence service and 10,000 miners brought in from outside the capital.
In what was one of a string of similar violent episodes involving miners and people unhappy that many former Ceausescu officials remained in positions of power, four people were killed and 1,269 were injured.
Iliescu, a former Ceausescu minister who led Romania in the weeks after the revolution and was elected president in 1990, was indicted in 2005 but the charges were dropped in 2007 because of procedural errors.
Iliescu, now 86, has said he sees "nothing to reproach myself with".
The probe into the 1990 events was re-opened in March 2015 after Romania, a member of the European Union since 2007, was sharply criticised by the European Court of Human Rights.
The 32 being probed also include former miners chief Miron Cozma, who has already been convicted over other violence committed by miners in January 1999.