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Questions To Be Asked After Photo-Reporters Are Detained in the 21st Century

July 18, 2011
Lawyer Sandro Baramidze

1.    Why were the photo-reporters arrested at 3:00 am? Was the situation so urgent that they could not detain them by day time? More precisely, what was the reason of their urgent actions? If they could not detain the photo-reporters next morning, why they did not detain them on the previous evening? Do you remember the regime which detained people at night?
2.    According to the new Criminal Procedural Code of Georgia a person shall be detained only based on the court decision. Did the MIA officers have a court verdict when they were arresting the photo-reporters?
3.    The law also envisages several circumstances when a person can be detained without court verdict. Were any of these circumstances observed in this particular case? And if yes, what was it?
4.     The espionage is related with the secret information. If the information is secret, the procedures of making it secret shall be preserved. The law estimates terms and rules for making any information secret. Was the information, whose collection, possession or spread the photo-reporters are accused of, made secret in accordance to those rules? Or was any condition in the rule for what the secret information could turn non-secret?
5.    In accordance to the law, spread of the information containing the state secret by mass media sources is not crime if publishing of this information is important for public security or which was already published before. Was similar circumstance observed in this particular case?
6.    Ordinary citizen has no access to state secret. Then, how did the photo-reporters manage to obtain the secret information if it really was secret in accordance to the above-mentioned regulations?
7.    The law regulates the access of citizen to the state secret. Was this regulation applied in this particular case? Were the photo-reporters examined in accordance to this regulation?
8.    The espionage also deals with “collecting and transfer of the information for the foreign state counter-intelligence service or foreign organization against the state interests of Georgia. What is meant under “other information?”Is not the law so obscure that disables a person to realize what is forbidden for him and what not?
9.    Why was it necessary to close the first court hearing on the accused photo-reporters? The case-law of the Strasbourg Court states that publicity of the trials is one of the fundamental human rights. It can be restricted, let us say, for national security motives. But, existence of similar motive does not automatically mean that the closure of the trial is lawful. There should be clear needs and the corresponding balance shall be preserved between publicity principle and national security requirements. Did the Tbilisi City Court envisage these particular requirements of the European Court of Human Rights when they decided to close the court hearing?
10.    In accordance to the new Criminal Procedural Code, a valid assumption shall exist when preventive measures are used, or there shall be valid allegation that an accused will either disappear or will not appear to the court, or will destroy the information urgently important for the case or will commit a new crime. Which of these concrete allegations became ground to the decision of the Tbilisi City Court when they sent the photo-reporters to pre-trial detention?

I do not know whether the photo-reporters really committed the crime [they are accused of], but I wish to hear answers to these questions in order to find out whether I really live in the 21st century Georgia or in ancient time or somewhere else in completely different country?

Netgazeti

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