European Court will try Girgvliani Case while Saakashvili grants pardon to Sandro’s murderers

European Court required from Georgian party to submit evidences unsuccessfully demanded by the victim’s side in all three court instances. The government did not send those evidences even to the European Court. Georgian government prefers to receive very critical evaluation from Strasburg Court rather than send the evidences and divulgate the order-issuers and other associates.

Offenders Alania, Bibiluridze, Ghachava and Aptsiauri – sentenced for sadistic murder of Sandro Girgvliani – have been granted pardon by the President and halved their term. Than the government “examined” the case and granted freedom to them. They are accountable not for only Sandro’s death but also for death of his relatives: Irina, Jimsher, Lia and Eter Enukidzes. However, it seems that enslavement prevails over the law supremacy in this country! Otherwise how could it happen that the murderers of Girgvliani family have been released after three years of imprisonment?!

Girgvlianis were unable to prove the truth and hopefully they did not expect it to happen here, but in order to get the case accepted by the European Court, they had to pass through all instances here. As we are informed, Strasburg Court will inform the parties soon about the date of trial of Girgvliani Case. In order to clarify these issues “Georgia and the World” talked to the plaintiff’s attorney, Mr. Shalva Shavgulidze.

- In fact, European Court finished written communication with the parties regarding Girgvliani’s Case. It is noteworthy, that the European Court precisely accomplished the communication. They sent us the government’s position for our comments for several times and transferred our position to the government. Recently, we received a letter from the European Court, stating that we will be informed about the date of trial soon. The issue regarding the hearings will be also settled. About a month and a half ago, Strasburg Court addressed the parties with the question whether we wanted to have the hearings of the case or not. Of course, we replied we wished to have live proceedings that will then appear on the web-site of the European court and the society will have the opportunity to view it. However, we do not know what decision will be taken by the European Court regarding the hearings, so far. As for the trial date, it will be announced soon.

- From your point of view what decision will make the European court?

- We insisted the European parliament to recognize the infringements made by the Georgian government against the plaintiff, namely infringement of: the second clause of European Convention (the right to private life), the third clause (prohibition of torture), as well as the sixth clause (access to fair trial), and the thirteenth clause therein (right to use effective means of defense). Validation of our claim by the European court will cause duplicative investigation of the case.

Besides, we claimed the moral losses of 300 thousand Euros as well. However, the priority issue will still remain to seek the duplicative investigation of the issue because in fact neither the preliminary investigation nor the investigation at the trial took place. That’s why the order-issuers are not uncovered so far. The offence committed by the offenders was qualified incorrectly. Instead of granting the qualification of premeditated murder committed in aggravating circumstances, it was qualified as: a body injury resulting in death. In fact it was a premeditated murder committed in aggravating circumstances, as the victim had 11 wounds in neck area. The wounds are assessed as heavy injuries in dangerous zone that caused the death of the victim.

In this case granting the qualification other than the premeditated murder, is somewhat disreputable, unfortunately, such unimaginable decision was made by the Georgian court in all three instances. The illogical continuation of it was the Presidents decision to grant pardon to Girgvliani’s murderers.

- As we are informed the European Court put “uncomfortable” questions to the government representatives. Could you recall some of them?

- I would like to mention that European court expressed its greatest interest toward the case. People might remember that in all three instances we insisted to gain the opportunity to get acquainted with the material evidences attached to the case. We even requested the opportunity to get acquainted with the abstracts of telephone conversation and other evidences, but it was impossible as we were denied to have access to the evidences attached to the case. Those evidences mainly contained video material seized in the course of different stages of the investigation. There was the video material related to suspect identification and that would show the degree of objectiveness of the process.  For example, identification of Melnikov by Bukhaidze – I mean the initial identification. The video evidence attached to the case contains video material recorded by the observation camera installed at the gates of Badri Patarkatsishvili’s house. Namely it fixed the movement of automobiles toward Okrokana road. Only the two-hour period of the attached evidence is decoded – from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. i.e. the period when the mentioned “ML” jeep passed by in which the kidnapped victim Girgvliani and Bukhaidze were sitting. We insisted that the video camera should have recorded the movement of automobiles all the night long and required to disclose the whole record. I would like to stress again that the mentioned material is completely attached to the case.

I have not heard about any similar precedents in Georgian justice. All three court instances ended so that the evidences attached to the case have not been shared with our party. Even the European court unsuccessfully required submission of mentioned fourteen evidences from Georgian party.  This gives us the ground to think that those evidences would clear up participation of some other individuals in the murder and as well as other illegal conducts of investigative and court instances. Georgian government preferred to be seriously criticized by Strasburg court rather than to send the named evidences to it. So, now you can imagine how the preparations took place in the European court.

- If the hearings take place in Strasburg, you will represent the plaintiff, but do you know who is going to represent our government?

- If the hearings take place, I and David Jandieri will represent the victim. As for the government representatives, I have no idea who can it be.

- How would you assess the pre-term release of Girgvliani’s murderers?

- What assessment could be given to the fact?! This is a logical continuation (and not the end) of all misconduct that done by the government towards the mentioned people. This will continue further through granting the murderers different allowances and support. The whole case was built upon the unjustness and therefore the government would not blush for covering their own accessories. The investigation process conducted by the investigative bodies was extremely disreputable. The attendees of the dinner: Tako Salakaia, Data Akhalaia, Vasil Sanodze and Oleg Melnikov were not punished, and the offence committed by the exposed offenders was given inadequately light qualification consequently entailing nonobjective decisions by the courts. The judges completely accepted position of preliminary investigation that means that they were engaged in falsification of the case. Moreover, even for the offence qualification officially imposed to them the law considered imprisonment for up to 12 years, but Georgian parliament adopted changes to the law and half diminished the term of imprisonment to them. Another amendment was made to the Law about imprisonment. We stated for several times that Alania and his associates were accommodated in the same cell, where they enjoyed unlimited supply of alcoholic beverages and other means of pleasure. Instead of satisfying our request (as the Law imperatively prohibited accommodating the offenders committing the same offence together) the Parliament made changes to the law and gave way to such precedence. This means, that the legislative body also got involved in the chain of illegality. And finally, the peak of the injustice ended by the presidential pardon granted to the felonies – pre-term release from the prison. It is obvious that in relation to the specific cases each branch of the state institutions is engaged in falsification of facts and concealing certain people thus discrediting image and reputation of all government institutions.

Interviewer Manana Chkheidze