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Suicide or Murder? Mysterious Death of Prisoner

February 17, 2006

Suicide or Murder? Mysterious Death of Prisoner

Sveta Tsintsabadze is suspicious about her son’s suicide because of questions that still remain unanswered regarding the case. On September 30, 2005, the prisoner, Zurab Tsintsabadze, was found hung in Khoni Common and Strict Detention House # 9. His mother says that her son was hung because he was a danger to somebody.

On September 30, 2005, Zurab Tsintsabadze was found hung. He had been accused of damaging private property and was sentenced to three years imprisonment. Tsintsabadze’s mother thinks that her son was murdered. “The evidence showing that my son committed suicide is absurd. According to the expert testimony, the finger prints seem to have been erased as there is no trace of any prints anywhere. In a suicide case, everybody tries to preserve the prints to avoid false accusation”, says Sveta Tsintsabadze.

Tsintsabadze points out gaps and errors in the writ, which was filled out after the examination of the crime scene and adds that the writ has been poorly written. “The writ says that the prisoner managed to climb into the storeroom through a window. However, the writ fails to mention whether the window was already open or if it was broken by the prisoner. The person responsible for the room was not interrogated and prints were not taken from the things in the room. What’s more, the chairs used by my son were in a cabinet and the investigator was only supplied with these later, together with the shoes of my son that were also missed during the examination of the place”, says the prisoner’s mother.

Iago Baramidze, a lawyer with the Human Rights Information and Documentation Centre stated: “The investigation has not been carefully conducted and the writ was not properly filled out. Furthermore, the prints on objects at the scene of the accident have not been taken. The time of death is also different in the official documents. The investigation leaves many unanswered and unsolved questions, leading to greater speculation that Tsintsabadze was in fact killed”.

A ‘Troika’ cigarette, a green lighter and medicine pill were found after the body was examined. Nothing was said about a letter discovered in the morgue dissection room. Shamil Gugava, a staff member at the morgue, noted in his testimony that he cleaned the refrigeration room two or three times a month, but he only came across the letter after a month and nine days. “How could the letter have been found in the refrigeration chamber,” asks Sveta Tsintsabadze, “if the body was brought there naked?”

An expertise for the detection of fingerprint has no been carried out. In addition, a mobile phone the prisoner used to communicate with his family is lost.

Despite pressure upon Tsintsabadze by the prosecution, she still declares that the investigation is incomplete: “The length of the rope is still unknown and the imprint it supposedly left around my son’s neck seems strange – they are not the markings you would expect to find in the case of suicide by hanging”, says Tsintsabadze


Maka Malakmadze from Batumi

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