Nicolae Ceaușescu the country in the three days since the Ceaușescus fled Bucharest. Similarly, Victor Stănculescu, who had been defense minister before going over to the revolution, said in 2009 that the alternative would have been seeing the Ceaușescus lynched on the streets of Bucharest. The Ceaușescus were the last people to be executed in Romania before the abolition of capital punishment on 7 January 1990. Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu were originally buried in simple graves at Ghencea Cemetery in Bucharest, on opposite sides of a path; their graves were often decorated with flowers and symbols of communist rule. In April 2007,
Nicolae Militaru Nicolae Militaru Nicolae Militaru (November 10, 1925 – December 27, 1996) was a Romanian general who served as Defense Minister between December 1989 and February 1990. A graduate of the M. V. Frunze Military Academy in Moscow, he commanded the Romanian Land Forces' 2nd Army from 1969 to 1978. That year, under suspicion for being a GRU agent and for plotting against dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, he was retired from active duty and made an assistant to the Defense Minister. A "Securitate" plot to depose Ceauşescu existed in the early 1980s, and he is known to have joined in 1984, adding