MIA Extremely Concerned about President’s Pardon Act

Interpresnews

President Mikheil Saakashvili pardoned people, majority of whom were convicted for grave crimes. Namely, among the pardoned prisoners are: 15 persons charged for the attempted premeditated murder; 4 persons charged for premeditated murder (12 of them were fully released from imprisonment – all of them were convicted for grave crimes); 32 people convicted for burglary (majority of them for aggregated crimes – 13 of them belong to the category of particularly grave crimes), 70 people for narcotic crime (majority of them were drug-dealers, those for whom Amnesty Law was not applicable late in 2012), 27 persons for thievery (part of them were charged for several crimes), 6 persons were charged for robbery, 30 people for misappropriation/extortion (part of them for several crimes), 6 people for professional abuse (three of them for bribery), 9 people for unintentional crimes and 15 people for other crimes (illicit restriction of freedom, taking hostage, resistance to police officer, hooliganism, smuggler, avoiding tax payment, illicit crossing of border, etc). 

53 of pardoned people had their imprisonments half-reduced, and 4 had reduced. 122 people were convicted before October 2, 2012.

MIA confirmed this information with Interpresnews. Head of the press-center at the MIA Nino Giorgobiani said that MIA condemns the pardon act passed by the President. “This fact is categorically inadmissible and alarming for MIA because most of the pardoned people were convicted for grave crimes. I would like to remind the society that for the past one year President pardoned 2 204 people including those convicted for grave crimes. It is also noteworthy that law enforcement officers arrested 240 of them for the repeated crime in the same period,” Nino Giorgobiani said.