In January 2001, Frunda was among the 38 parliamentarians from 18 countries who signed an appeal to have Ilie Ilaşcu, an ethnic Romanian Moldovan citizen who had been tried and sentenced to death by a Transnistrian court, to be retried in a Council of Europe member state. He noted that the matter was problematic, since Ilaşcu was confirmed to have "shot and killed two people" by the Moldovan Supreme Court, but pointed out that the Transnistrian authorities were holding Ilaşcu in "inhumane conditions" (a situation which he defined as "inadmissible"). Beginning 2003, Frunda sparked controversy when he called for the posthumous rehabilitation of Albert Wass, a Hungarian writer convicted in Romania for participation in the Holocaust. His statement to the press argued that Wass, unlike Romania's World War II dictator Ion Antonescu (who had been tried in a similar context), was the victim of procedural mistakes.