Iron Guard Death Squads - Nicadori

Nicadori

The Nicadori assassinated Prime Minister Ion G. Duca at Sinaia train station at 10 pm on December 30, 1933. This was the first major political assassination in Romania since Barbu Catargiu was shot in 1862. The Nicadori killed Duca because he had arrested thousands of Legionnaires during the 1933 election campaign, also leaving 18 dead; and because he had allowed for increased Jewish immigration while blocking that of Aromanians to Dobrudja. Their name was derived from the first letters of the group members' names:

• Nicolae Constantinescu, who fired the four fatal shots, was a student at the Commerce Academy in Bucharest.
• Ion Caranica, an Aromanian, was born in 1903 in Veria. He studied commerce in Thessaloniki and then Bucharest. He joined the Iron Guard in 1930, and fought for Aromanian rights.
• Doru Belimace, also an Aromanian, was born in 1910 in Malovište, near Bitola. His family settled in Bucharest after World War I. He graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters; he attended its Faculty of Law at the same time but did not finish.

Arrested right away, the trio was sentenced to hard labour for life. While in prison, Caranica wrote a book on Aromanian issues, and Belimace, among other works, wrote Revoluţia fascistă ("The Fascist Revolution"). They were killed, along with the Decemviri and Codreanu, on November 30, 1938, while being transported to Jilava prison.