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Nino Zuriashvili: “What happened is a disgrace for the police!”

August 27, 2012

“Georgia isn’t a safe country! I don’t consider myself safe!” says Nino Zuriashvili, investigative journalist and head of Studio Monitor, whose studio was robbed one month ago.

“I think it’s a disgrace when law enforcement representatives say that Georgia is the safest country in Europe. One day, when nine of our journalists arrived at the studio there was nothing left except wardrobes. Almost the entire studio was robbed and they are unable to find whoever did it”, the journalist says.

Studio Monitor is located 50 meters from the parliament and was robbed at night on July 22. According to Zuriashvili, the robbers must have spent most of the night transporting equipment in boxes and yet no one saw anything in an area permanently patrolled by police and state security services. The neighbors did not say anything, but they should have considered it suspicious that boxes were taken out of the studio at night.

Old Tbilisi’s 7th precinct investigates this case under the robbery article. Nino Zuriashvili states that police dusted for fingerprints, went on the neighbor’s roof and conducted a variety of investigative activities, but now one month has already passed and nobody the victims. According to Zuriashvili, the police removed video from video cameras outside, but journalists don’t know if any robbers were identified.

The thief apparently entered the studio through the front door because the lock on the door was cracked, Nino Zuriashvili said to Guria News.

The fact that the investigation is taking so long makes her think that the incident wasn’t an ordinary robbery and instead was intended to paralyze the work in the studio.

“It wouldn’t be difficult for investigators to identify the robbers if it had been an ordinary robbery. The equipment that was taken from the studio is easily identifiable. They wouldn’t even be able to take it across the border. So I think that the investigation is taking especially long time”, said the journalist.

According to Zuriashvili, nowadays the studio journalists survive on enthusiasm and collegiality. European friends have transferred four thousand euros and Monitor also got a ten thousand dollar grant. With this money, the studio will be able to at least buy a minimum of equipment.

“Guria News”

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