Web Portal on Human Rights in Georgia

Members of the Coalition Freedom of Choice got hold of a memory stick of Lanchkhuti district police officer Shmagi Uratadze, which contained various information and exposed blatant and illegal interference of the police in the pre-election process.

These materials prove that police watches and collects information about political opinions of local inhabitants, personal data [personal ID numbers, phone numbers] of local leaders of opposition parties, public servants and their family members without relevant court sanctions.

The most astonishing fact is that police officer had collected information about those people, who have satellite dish antennas at homes, as well as data about local opposition leaders who “supervises introduction of dish antennas in the district,” and data about “people working in the company” of Bidzina Ivanishvili, leader of the opposition political coalition Georgian Dream. We have grounded doubt that police officer Uratadze was performing this “hard job” based on the instruction of his leadership. If this fact is proved, it will demonstrate that law enforcement agency is performing anti-constitutional activities and implements function of a political police that serves interests of the ruling party instead the law.

We checked part of the information on the police officer Shmagi Uratadze‘s memory stick and the collected information is valid. The Coalition has neither authority nor ability to carry out valid investigation on the police officer’s activities. Consequently, the obtained material cannot be considered valid proof of illegal activities of the police. Despite that, due to the significance of the obtained information, as well as high interest of Georgian and International community in the pre-election process, we decided to make the information public in an original form (except personal information of citizens stored in the memory stick).

We appeal to the Inter-institutional Commission of the Security Council of Georgia and recommend them: due to the significance of the information stored in the memory stick, it is urgently important to timely study it. Naturally, we believe it is useless to oblige Georgian law enforcement agencies to carry out relevant investigation because abovementioned information indicates to their illegal and anti-constitutional activities. We do not have guarantees that if we hand the memory stick to them they would not erase or change the information. So, we suggest you to set up public commission with the participation of nongovernmental organizations and experts which will investigate the fact and release relevant conclusion on the issue. We are ready to hand the memory stick to the commission together with all relevant information we have.