Page 11 - IAV Digital Magazine #446

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Dead Man Walking: Court Rejects Romanian's Claim He's Alive
By Alison Mutler, AP
Constantin Reliu learned in January that he was dead.
After more than 20 years of work- ing as a cook in Turkey, the 63- year-old returned home
to Romania to discover that his wife had had him officially regis- tered as dead.
He has since been living a legalistic night- mare of trying to prove to authori- ties that he is, in fact, alive. He faced a major setback Thursday when a court in the northeastern city of Vaslui refused to overturn his death certificate because his request was filed "too late."
The decision, the court said, is final.
"I am a living ghost," Reliu told The Associated Press in a phone interview Friday
from his home in Barlad, north- eastern Romania.
"I am officially dead, although I'm alive," he said. "I have no income and because I am listed as dead, I can't do any- thing."
During the inter- view, Reliu was deeply emotion- al, starting off by saying "I think I am going to cry" and going on to voice rage and a
desire for revenge against his wife, who now lives in Italy.
"I am not sure whether I am divorced or not," he said. "I am not sure whether she is married to someone else or not. Nobody will tell me."
Reliu explained that he first went to work in Turkey in 1992 and returned in 1995 to the first big shock of his mar- riage — his
wife's infidelity. In 1999, he decided to return to Turkey for good.
The AP was not able to locate his wife to hear her side of the story.
Last December Turkish authori- ties detained him over expired papers and in January deported him to Romania.
Upon landing at Bucharest air- port, he was informed by bor- der officials that
he had been offi- cially declared dead and under- went six hours of questioning and tests.
They measured the distance between his eyes to see if it corre- sponded to an old passport pho- tograph; they asked him ques- tions about his home town, such as where the town hall was; they checked his fingerprints.
"They decided
that it was me!" he said.
But authorities in Barlad were less convinced. He spent weeks try- ing to persuade them to issue him papers so that he officially "existed," he said. When that failed, he asked them to overturn the ruling on his death certificate, issued in 2016, which also ended in failure Thursday on pro- cedural grounds.
Reliu said he would like to file a fresh lawsuit but has no money and suf- fers from dia- betes, which makes every- thing more diffi- cult.
He also said he has been banned for life from returning to Turkey but would like to write to Turkish
President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan to appeal the deci- sion.
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