Interpresnews
On January 1, 2011, the amendments to the Constitution of Georgia will be put in force which will give unlimited power to the police and prosecutor’s office to detain people.
The newspaper Resonance has published a scandalous article about the secretly introduced amendments to the Constitution.
Expert Vakhtang Khmaladze, who actively participated in the discussion of the draft constitution, said in his interview with the newspaper that the draft amendments, which were submitted to the parliament of Georgia in July 2010 for further discussion, did not contain similar amendments at all.
Khmaladze clarified that the Article 18, Part VI of the Constitution, which states that the term of arrest of a suspect in the commission of a crime shall not exceed 72 hours and the term of detention on remand of an accused shall not exceed 9 months, is amended. More precisely, the first part of the sentence was removed from the Part VI and currently it states – “the term of detention on remand of an accused shall not exceed 9 months.” Khmaladze said the Constitution no longer estimates the norm “the detention of the suspected person should not last more than 72 hours.”
“The law might not contain the requirement of accusing the suspect in the crime within the term of three days. This requirement might be withdrawn from the law at all; or 72 hours might change into 5 days, 10 days, one moth, 5 months, etc,” said the expert.
Khmaladze underscored the importance of the 72 hours. He said 72 hours, which was written in the Part VI, means that a suspect shall be declared accused within 72 hours after detention and the accusation protocol should contain the information what she/he is blamed in. “After the protocol is drawn up, the suspected person is accused and not suspect. But, if she/he is not accused within 72 hours, the detainee should be released. This norm entitles the state to preliminarily investigate the fact in order to collect enough evident against the detainee for the grounded imprisonment.”
The expert said, the amendment will create problems for the protection of the human rights and will enable the government to detain a person based on the unreasonable suspicion and place him/her in long-term imprisonment.
As for the secret introduction of the amendments to the Constitution, Khmaladze said it is violation of the Constitutional regulation and irresponsibility of the government, “if it is possible to evaluate the violation of the constitution as irresponsibility,” said the expert.
The chairman of the former station constitutional commission Avtandil Demetrashvili did not have information about the amendments either; he was discussing recommendations/notes regarding the constitutional amendments.
In his interview with the Resonance, Demetrashvili said he has not discussed every amendments introduced to the Constitution. So, he does not have information about the amendments to the Article 18, Part VI; though he added that if the Constitution was amended, it was to be preliminarily discussed by all means.
The chairman of legal committee of the parliament of Georgia Pavle Kublashvili cannot understand the reason why people got astonished with the fact. He cannot understand why the Authors of this Scandal put themselves in an awkward situation.
Pavle Kublashvili reported to the Interpresnews that the term “suspect” was really removed from the Constitution because this word does not have any legal meaning according to the new Criminal Procedural Code too. The society and the authors of this so-called scandal also know it.
As for the Procedural Code, it was being discussed during several years. “It is too late to protest it,” said Kublashvili.
As for the term of the detention, Kublashvili indicated to the Article 18 Part III of the Constitution which clearly estimates the detention terms. More precisely, “An arrest of an individual shall be permissible by a specially authorised official in the cases determined by law. Everyone arrested or otherwise restricted in his/her liberty shall be brought before a competent court not later than 48 hours. If, within next 24 hours, the court fails to adjudicate upon the detention or another type of restriction of liberty, the individual shall immediately be released.”
Kublashvili clarified that in accordance to this paragraph, the note about 72 hours was useless.
As for the secretly introduced amendments to the Constitution, the MP said that the State Constitutional Commission did not discuss this issue in fact. However, a young professor from the Kutaisi University asked a question about the removal of the term from the Constitution during the public discussion of the amendments.
The MP added that the clarifications regarding the amendment were made during the committee discussions too. So, Pavle Kublashvili does not understand why people started complaining and what the authors of the scandal want to achieve by it.
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