Ion Iliescu, Romania’s first freely elected president after Communism, helped bring down the country’s dictatorship and led ...

As a three-term president, he guided the country toward democracy, but he was called an authoritarian at heart and accused of ...

Ion Iliescu, Romania’s first freely elected president after the fall of communism in 1989, who later faced charges of crimes ...

Initially hailed as the man who would lead Romania into a new democratic era, Iliescu's legacy soon became more complicated.

The casket carrying the body of Ion Iliescu, Romania’s first elected president after the bloody fall of communism in 1989, ...

Romania's former President Ion Iliescu, who led its transition from communism and set it on the path to European Union and ...

On the day of Ion Iliescu's funeral, the polarizing legacy of Romania's first elected president after the fall of communism ...

Iliescu was Romania's first freely elected president after the fall of communism in 1989, and later faced charges of crimes ...

Ion Iliescu, Romania's first leader after the collapse of the Ceausescu dictatorship, died at 95. He saw himself as a savior, ...

As president, he steered the country through its transition to democracy. He was later accused of crimes against humanity.

Iliescu became Romania's interim president and oversaw the rapid dismantling of the Ceausescu regime. In May 1990, he and his party won the elections with 85 percent of the vote.

But Iliescu was also the one who got all political parties to agree to support Romania's path to EU and NATO membership. It joined the NATO alliance in 2004 and the EU in 2007.