Legal Committee of the Parliament Discussed Legislative Proposal of Human Rights Center

Kristine Pakhomov

On April 26, the Legal Committee of the Parliament of Georgia discussed the legislative proposal of Human Rights Center on the introduction of amendments to the Criminal Procedural Code of Georgia. Human Rights Center proposed the Parliament to find its resolution ongranting the status of political prisoner to a person as a newly revealed circumstance to enable the courts to review past guilty-verdicts on the political prisoners.

Human Rights Center believes that sub-paragraph shall be added to the Article 310 of the Criminal Procedural Code of Georgia with the following formulation: the verdict shall be reviewed based on newly revealed circumstances if there is a resolution of the Parliament of Georgia on granting a status of political prisoner to a person, and if the verdict against him/her was enforced.

Executive director of Human Rights Center Aleko Tskitishvili presented the proposal to the Committee and spoke about the need of the proposed amendments based on concrete examples.

“Care on the restoration of the breached rights of political prisoners is responsibility of the Coalition Georgian Dream and current parliament in general because at the end of 2012 they granted the status of political prisoner to several dozen persons. Also, the Parliament took responsibility to ensure legal rehabilitation of prisoners and creation of legal mechanism to eradicate miscarriages of justice. However, up to today, when this Parliament is approaching the end of its mandate, we see that no steps were taken towards resolution of the problems of former political prisoners. Our proposal aims to enable the former political prisoners, who have been unsuccessfully urging for the revision of their verdicts, to appeal the court based on the newly revealed circumstances,” Aleko Tskitishvili sad in the session of the Parliamentary committee.

The MPs had different reaction on the initiative. The chairman of the Legal Committee thinks it is impossible to introduce this amendment to the Criminal Procedural Code.

“The Parliament made a political decision when it granted the status of political prisoners to people. The motive of the decision was political. At the same time, having a status of a political prisoner does not mean that a person is innocent. He may really have committed some crime.

The political decision of the Parliament cannot become basis for repeated judiciary proceedings.

It may even encourage the crimes. For example, somebody may commit a crime hoping that he would receive status of a political prisoner and then he would be found innocent for that,” Vakhtang Khamaladze, the committee chairman, said.

A committee member Gedavan Popkhadze said it is possible to introduce similar amendments into the Code. “It is not standard decision when the supreme legislative body of the country makes decision about presence of political prisoners in the country. It means the principles of fair trial were breached with regard to those persons, or it was a politically motivated verdict. They may have committed some offence but the Court was biased in other direction and passed guilty verdict not for the crime but for political affiliation” Gedevan Popkhadze said.

Lawyer of Human Rights Center Nestan Londaridze said at the session that the risk as if the new sub-paragraph in the Code will encourage others to commit crime, is absolutely excluded because the proposal of the organization applies to the parliament’s resolution on granting a status to a person that is not easily achieved.

“The initiative of Human Rights Center is a good instrument to destroy the doubts and questions about the political prisoner’s status among politicians. Besides that, main cases of former political prisoners are under Top Secret status. Consequently, the society does not have information how fairly their cases were studied by the court,” Nestan Londaridze told humanrights.ge.

Based on the decision of the legal committee the discussion of the legislative proposal of Human Rights Center will continue in the Legal and Human Rights Committees of the Parliament with participation of the representatives of Human Rights Center.