Elene Chumburidze
Since late 2011 prisoners could not contact lawyer of Human Rights Center Nino Andriashvili on her phone number; so she had to change it.
In December of 2011, prison director physically abused prisoner. The latter called lawyer Nino Andriashvili and informed about the incident personally. Afterwards lawyer immediately went to prison and saw that her client was really beaten. Since then, prisoners could not call the lawyer on her phone number.
Later, when prisoners were calling the lawyer, they could not even get through the phone number. So Andriashvili’s number was completely blocked for prisoners. Nino Andriashvili said that everybody could call her – prosecutors, friends, acquaintances… except prisoners. The lawyer applied to the GeoCell Company and they clarified that it was not within their interest to block number of their client. Nino Andriashvili petitioned to the Ministry of Penitentiary and penitentiary department who also refused to have blocked her number.
In December of 2011, about two weeks after blocking her phone, when Human Rights Center spread information about it, prisoners could again contact Nino Andriashvili on the cell phone but it lasted only for a short time. A month later the number was blocked again and the lawyer had to buy a second phone and take different number. In parallel to it, she used old number too.
“Changing the phone-number created some problems for me; it took some time to inform every prisoner that I had a new phone number. Consequently, I could not respond to some violations timely. My clients protested blocking of my phone number with the members of Public Defender’s monitoring group and asked them assistance to resolve this problem,” said the lawyer.
Periodically, prisoners were checking whether lawyer’s phone was switched on. Nino Andriashvili said the problem was resolved after October 1 parliamentary elections. Nowadays, prisoners can freely contact her on the old number too.