Human Rights Center presented report on the Monitoring Trials of Former Government Officials

Nono Devidze

On January 14 Human Rights Centre presented the results of the monitoring trials of former state officials. 

With financial support of NED, from 15 January, 2013 to 15 December, Human Rights Center monitored trial hearings of former state officials in Tbilisi City Court. 

The Report presents findings from the monitoring of court hearings of the following high-profile cases: criminal cases on Bacho Akhalaia, Vano Merabishvili, Gigi Ugulava, Tengiz Gunava, Nika Gvaramia and others.

Executive Director of Human Rights Centre, Aleko Tskitishvili said that monitoring aimed to promote judiciary transparency and to observe how the judiciary authority complied with the principle of fair trial: “The main trend, that we have observed during this monitoring, is that nowadays court is more independent and prosecutor’s office does not have influence on the court”. 

In the framework of the project, monitors were describing the trial proceedings and were filling in the special questionnaires. Besides, Human Rights Centre’s journalists were writing articles on trial proceedings. Articles covering the trial hearings were published on our website www.humanrights.ge    

 

According to project director Nino Tsagareishvili, during the monitoring period principal of adversarial court proceedings and equality of arms were observed:  “The party for the defense and the prosecution had equal opportunity to present their positions. But there were problems with maintain order at Bachana Akhalaia’s proceedings. Sometimes lawyers’ questions to witnesses were aggressive and irrelevant. Leaving Gigi Ugulava without compulsory measure was groundless.” 

Besides, it was revealed that legislations on video recording of Trial proceedings should be amended. Human Rights Centre thinks that internet televisions should also have right of video recording. 

According to the report, the fact of sexual violence against victim was discussed during public hearing. Nino Tsagareishvili thinks that the right to dignity and privacy should have been protected by the judge and in such cases the hearing should have been closed. 

Also, the problem was the transparency and publicity of the trial. Sometimes people were not able to attend proceedings because of the lack of space in the  ourt room. According to the recommendation of Human Rights Centre addressed to the court, hearings on high-profile cases should be held in bigger court rooms, in order to ensure publicity of the court proceeding and give opportunity to everybody to attend the hearing.