Zugdidi Police Threatens the Family of Murdered Tabidze

Nana Pazhava, Zugdidi, presage.tv

Presage.tv has previously written about the death of Badri Tabidze, an IDP from Abkhazia, under the title “Unresolved Case and Police Officers Suspected in Murder” on March 4. The circumstances surrounding Tabidze’s death are unclear, but there are new details about the incident that caused the death of 24-year-old young man.

The funeral procession from Odishi village to the Sajvaro Cemetery in Zugdidi was accompanied by police officers in squad cars and taxis, plain clothes officers driving the latter. Several police officers were mobilized in front of the Zugdidi police office on Sokhumi Street. Four video-cameras belonging to the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) were watching the situation from the bushes of the Botanical Garden.

In spite of pressure from the police, Tabidze’s family had chosen to take the shortest route to the cemetery in order to pass the police station and protest in front of it. Thus, it was not hard to guess why the police desperately tried to follow Badri Tabidze’s last journey – doing their best to prevent family members and relatives from stopping in front of the police department. In addition to pressuring most villagers in Odishi, the police also tried to bargain with the family members, urging them to choose a different, longer route to the cemetery.

Badri Tabidze’s mother, Keti Gadelia said that law enforcement officers had threatened to arrest everyone if there were any protests in front of the police office. Gadelia also said that the head of Zugdidi police department, Levan Kiria, was personally supervising the protest “neutralization” process.

Keti Gadelia decided to refrain from protesting in front of the police station, in order to protect the children of others from harm. However, this does not preclude other protests in order to shed light on the murder of her son, the real reasons of which she has yet to find out. Gadelia intends to walk from Zugdidi to Tbilisi to find out the truth. She said she will try to meet the President of Georgia, believing that Mikheil Saakashvili will assist her in finding her son’s murderer.

Before that, the Tabidzes are waiting for the results of a forensic investigation to be published by the Kutaisi National Bureau of Expertise. Even though the conclusion of the investigation, comparing a pink stain with Badri Tabidze’s blood, was delivered to the Zugdidi district police on April 13, no one seems to be in a hurry to had the document to the victim’s side. On April 17, Keti Gadelia was still waiting for the letter.

The lawyer of the family does not know the exact date when the final result of the forensic expertise will be delivered to the Tabidzes. In an interview with Presage.tv, Lawyer Londa Shamugia spoke about suspicious circumstances in the case materials but refrained from making any details public. She said the Zugdidi police had launched a case under Article 118 of the Criminal Code of Georgia (less severe damage to the body).

For the victim’s family, the suspicion that police officers participated in the murder grew stronger when an investigation was launched under this particular article. When Badri Tabidze was delivered to the Zugdidi Medical Center he had suffered severe trauma to his skull, which eventually led to his death on March 29.

The Head of Zugdidi Critical Medicine Department, Sulkhan Orzhonia, told Presage.tv that the patient could die at any moment because of his severe trauma: “Badri Tabidze was brought to the hospital in comatose condition. He had a large epidural hematoma in the skull. A neuro-surgeon immediately operated on him after which the patient spent 27 days in the critical medicine department connected to a breathing machine. Subsequently, the patient was brought to the surgical department where he was given a tracheotomy pipe. I would like to clarify that the patient was in extremely grave condition from the moment of his delivery to hospital.

He had closed trauma to the skull with bruises and epidural hematoma but I cannot say the cause of those injuries; a different institution should answer this. A trepanation was made and the hematoma relieved. As for the Tabidzes’ suspicion that the patient was suffocated, it is simply incredible and impossible for that to happen in the clinic.”

The mother still disagrees with the doctors’ version. Keti Gadelia is sure her son was recovering with the help of the doctors. But she believes her son was suffocated by the police or on their direct instructions. She said that the murderer chose a time when family members were not in the hospital room. Keti Gadelia said it was easy to kill the young man through tampering with the tracheotomy pipe and thus prevent Badri Tabidze from speaking the truth.

“My son tried to contact us. In his last days, he could even swallow food; he heard everything and recognized everybody. I was asking him to respond to my questions using mimics or movement; I asked him whether the police was guilty in his tragedy and in reply to my question he clenched his fist,” Keti Gadelia said.

According to the family members, Badri Tabidze died of injuries caused to him by an unidentified blunt object with which police officers had struck him in the head several times. Tabidze’s mother said Badri Tabidze was at his aunt’s family on New Year’s. The drunken young man left the family at about 8:00 pm and walked towards Zugdidi. His aunt followed him, asking him to turn back but he did not obey her and continued walking. Soon, Zugididi police officers stopped him on Zugdidi-Chkhorotsku central road, put him in the police car and took him to the police station. There they beat him ruthlessly; when they were convinced that Tabidze was dead, they took him back to the road.

At about 8:00 pm a resource officer at the Grigolishi Public School, Zamira Rogava, found the young man unconscious and reported it to the police. An ambulance arrived at the scene together with police officers and took him to hospital. He was registered as an unknown person in the medical center and doctors prepared him for surgery. They found an ID and some small change in his pocket. His place of residence according to the ID was Achigvara village in Gali district but there was no information about his current place of residence in the Nutsubidze Plateau IDP Compact Settlement Center, in Tbilisi.

The doctors unsuccessfully urged the police to find the patient’s family. Tabidze’s relatives only learned about the accident the next day when the police called them. Several hours later, according to a notification letter, a police investigator handed Badri Tabidze’s passport to his family members. Inside Tabidze’s international passport was a list of phone numbers to close relatives and family members. The Tabidzes started complaining to the police and tried to find out the reason why they had not informed the family about the accident immediately upon discovering his identity. In reply, the police rebuked them for being “ungrateful” and said: “You should be grateful to us for having stored his passport and change.”

The withholding of the list of phone numbers and the passport of Badri Tabidze became the family’s main evidence against the police. They believe that the police got confused and forgot to put the passport back into the young man’s pocket when they brought the body back to the road.

After this tragedy, the Tabidzes have faced a new problem. Zugdidi Medical Center requests them to immediately pay the cost of Badri Tabidze’s treatment – 24,201 GEL.

The executive director of the Center, Roland Akhalaia, offered the family an opportunity to to pay the money at a later date. Akhalia said that the patient did not have any insurance and did not qualify for any privileges or discounts based on his age.

Keti Gadelia said she did not know about the debt. Nevertheless, she thinks it is impossible to pay the high cost of treatment. Just before their son died, the family again qualified for social benefits and they will receive an allowance and medical insurance from August, 2012. However, they exclude the possibility that this will somehow assist them in paying off the debt.

Keti Gadelia: “If my son had survived, I would have worked hard to pay the debt but now I cannot work; I want to die and how can I work for it when they killed the person most precious to me? I do not care about the debt now.”

Keti Gadelia has petitioned Tbilisi City Hall and the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Welfare to cover the expenses related to the medical treatment of her son. Both petitions were refused.