Lado Bitchashvili, Shida Kartli
On December 19, in the frame of the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism, representatives of the Government of Georgia once again requested effective investigation into the death of Davit Basharuli during the summary meeting of 2017 in Ergneti village.
Davit Basharuli disappeared in June 2014 and in the beginning of 2015 he was found dead in one of the villages of Akhalgori municipality.
“There are many unanswered questions in this case and of course we are curious about the case and will ask questions in future too. The death fact shall be transparently investigated and all questions must be answered,” deputy head of the analytic unit of the State Security Service Kakhaber Kemoklidze said after the meeting was over.
Kemoklidze said they also spoke about the breached peace and security in the region, which are related with the ongoing military trainings in Tskhinvali region.
“According to our information, about 25 military trainings took place throughout 2017, where the military base # 4 participated with huge number of military equipment and soldiers that is violation of peace and security in the region. We also spoke about illegal borderization process, which still bothers the local population; the borderization created concrete problems on the occupation line and in the adjacent territories, and it is important to dismantle this illegal, artificial barriers,” Kemoklidze said.
Head of the Ossetian delegation Murad Jioev spoke about the destroyed border banner with the journalists after the meeting and expressed hope similar incidents will no longer happen.
“After the previous IPRM meeting, we got particularly alarmed with the shooting fact from the side of Georgia. All participants of the meeting agreed that similar facts are inadmissible because they can escalate the situation,” Jioev said.
By December 19, there are two citizens of Georgia in Tskhinvali pre-trial detention setting for alleged illegal crossing of the so-called border. The next meeting in the frame of the IPRM will take place on January 24, 2018 in Ergneti.