Salome Achba
On March 18, the Human Rights Center held a press-conference on the guilty-verdict of Zviad Kharebava - the former advisor to the ex-primer of Georgia Zurab Noghaideli in its office.
Zviad Kharebava was sentenced to 17-year-imprisonment for swindler and peculation. The convicted said in his testimony that the investigator demanded him to provide them with discrediting information about Zurab Noghaideli in exchange of his freedom; otherwise, he threatened Kharebava with long imprisonment.
The Human Rights Center studied Zurab Kharebava’s case and declared him a victim of the political revenge. In 2005, Zviad Kharebava was advisor of the former prime-minister of Georgia Zurab Noghaideli. Before that, he was head of a department in the ministry of economic development of Georgia. Kharebava is a mathematician by profession and received high education and doctor’s degree in the USA. After the Rose Revolution, he arrived in Georgia in respond to the appeal of the President Saakashvili (when he suggested Georgian people living abroad to return to the homeland where they could get good job) and continued his activities here. In 2005, having resigned from the position of the prime-minister’s advisor, he started activities in the private business sector and worked as a director of several large companies during several years.
The former advisor was detained in 2009. The court sentenced him to 17-year-imprisonment. His attorney said at the press-conference that there is no valid evidence against Zviad Kharebava in the case materials.
“Kharebava’s charge and verdict of the court are absolutely ungrounded and illegal. There is no evidence in the case materials to prove guiltiness of Zviad Kharebava. All charges were imposed on him step-by-step that is another proof for arbitral accusation. Several charges were removed eventually. In short, they did their best to keep him in prison as long as possible. And they succeeded with the support of the politicized judiciary system in our country,” said the Human Rights Center’s lawyer Eka Kobesashvili; she took up Kharebava’s case a short time ago.
The family also denies the guiltiness of Kharebava. The brother Grigol Kharebava said: “The only reason of my brother’s imprisonment is his refusal to the prosecutor’s office to make discrediting testimony about Noghaideli. Zviad could not invent accusations against Noghaideli because he is an honest person. His imprisonment was political revenge. My family will never put up with this illegality and we will continue our fight against injustice.”
Grigol Kharebava read an extract from his brother’s statement at the trial: “It is astonishing when your government puts you in a prison for a long time; but the most astonishing for me is to become nonentity; if I had accepted their (investigation) offer and denounced Noghaideli, I would have become a nonentity. So, I declined their offer to make false testimony about Noghaideli. As a result, they realized their threat against me and put me in jail for 17 years.”
“This is an example of a political persecution of people in Georgia. The Human Rights Center studied Kharebava’s case and prepared a special conclusion and statement about it. According to our information and findings, the person was persecuted on political grounds,” said the executive director of the Human Rights Center Ucha Nanuashvili.
He added that the Human Rights Center will inform the diplomatic corps accredited in Georgia and international organizations about the arbitrary imprisonment of the person and request their assistance.
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