Categories
Journalistic Survey
Articles
Reportage
Analitic
Photo Reportage
Exclusive
Interview
Foreign Media about Georgia
Editorial
Position
Reader's opinion
Blog
Themes
Children's Rights
Women's Rights
Justice
Refugees/IDPs
Minorities
Media
Army
Health
Corruption
Elections
Education
Penitentiary
Religion
Others

History of Political Prisoner’s Detention

June 4, 2008

Merab Ratishvili was arrested based on the phone call; though nobody knows who made the phone call

 

 Raul Gamisonia

Nona Suvariani, Tbilisi

Although, the government claims there are no political prisoners in Georgia, others take exception. The Ombudsman and attorneys representing Merab Ratishvili claim the complete opposite. Why do they think that political scientist and former president of Georgian National Golf Association were imprisoned on political grounds? What have been the associated e motivations and who benefits?  Details in the case material don’t hold up to closer scrutiny.

Merab Natroshvili’s case was discussed in Georgian Public Defender’s report of the second half of 2007. The Ombudsman spoke about political prisoners in that report. Merab Ratishvili was first arrested on October 26 2007. He claims his detention was connected with his cooperation with opposition parties. Eka Jikhvashvili, Ratishvili’s wife, recalls the political situation during her husband’s arrest. She considers the government somehow needed to use Ratishvili.

“You remembered the events that have transpired since November 7. Public Broadcasting showed documentary films that blamed the opposition for the cooperation with the secret services of various foreign countries. Merab lived in Moscow since the age of 18; he occupied some high position in the administration of the CIS.  He has arrived in Georgia from time-to-time, about one time a month; he had developed close relationship with the leaders of the opposition. However, he had friends among governmental officials as well. Evidently, they decide to use Merab because of his biography. The government demanded him to make a testimony against opposition leaders and to also plead guilty of being a spy. Since he did not make any forced testimony and could not blame for being a spy, finally Merab was charged for with being a drug addict.”

Merab Ratishvili reported that during his presence in custody officials from the Georgian Internal Ministry visited him periodically; they requested him to make false testimony against opposition leaders.

Merab Ratishvili’s rights were breached at the moment of detention and the public defender’s report exposed it in details. The plan of “attack” is the same in this case too: meeting with jeeps; employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs dressed in civil forms; violence, beating, planting drugs, etc, Ratishvili felt two needle pricks while in detention and saw how one officer gave a syringe to another. It might have been the syringe that was later found in Ratishvili’s car. Officers of the Special Operative Department declared to Ratishvili he was arrested for drug-addiction. It is noteworthy, that Merab Ratishvili is hypertonic and he fainted after he was injected and a request was made to call a doctor. However, the law enforcers did not pay any attention to his request and medical assistance was refused.

After the detention officers from SOD demanded Ratishvili to follow to his house and open the door. Eka Jikhvashvili opened the door after husband asked her to. Nearly ten policemen entered the house and illegally searched the premises.

“Merabi then urged them to allow him to be present at the search but he was taken away. I was alone with ten men. They entered every room because light was on everywhere. I asked them to let me ask somebody to attend the search in my place but they also refused. One of them was entertaining me with some speech. They were not searching very carefully because they knew what to look for. I had ironed the suit where they found 9 grams of “Metadon” half an hour ago. I do not know who put it there but it is clear that it should not have been there. They threw out some stuff from the cellar. Among them were t-shirts with slogans on them “By Ourselves”; Paata Davitaia sent those T-shirts to my husband and me but somehow, the police considered that the shirts were some kind of evidence against Merab.”

Eka Jikhvashvili reported that several days before the detention we they knew Ratishvili was being watched and information about his activities had been gathered. “How do you think, if a person knows that he is being watched and would be foolish enough to keep 9 grams of drugs in his house?”

Attorney of Merab Ratishvili, Raul Gamisonia, started the investigation of the case independently from the prosecutor’s office. He stated there are many suspicious circumstances in the case.

On October 24, three days before detention, the order for listening to Ratishvili’s phone conservation was passed. The order was based on the fact that unidentified people sold drugs to certain Meladze. Although, several people were mentioned in the case, the law enforcers knew only first name “Merabi” and telephone number. However, six days later they found out that Ratishvili had no connection with Meladze’s case. Thus, the law enforcers created a false case to find the grounds to listen in on Merab Ratishvili.

During three days when Merab was being listened to, 33 phone calls were made on his number. But police could not detect anything suspicious with the calls. On October 26 several hours before detention, a relative called Ratishvili who runs a sugar business; they spoke about his business too and mentioned a word “sugar”. Nobody would have ever paid attention to this word, if not two calls from one number with whom the conversation lasted for only 25 seconds. Merab could not recognize the person who also spoke about “sugar” again. Merab had scolded the stranger during both calls and hung up.  The stranger demanded “sugar” from him. Consequently, the conversation created the impression that Ratishvili was involved in selling drugs. Law enforcers explained the word “sugar” as “Metadon.” However, lawyer cannot understand why they concluded exactly that substance and not heroine, for example. The written version of the dialogue, which was produced to us by the attorney, exposes that Ratishvili cannot understand what sugar the stranger is speaking about, and who exactly is calling him in the first place.  Besides that, Ratishvili spoke about sugar with two people but law enforcers got interested only about the recent one and not about the relative who really spoke about sugar. After that phone call, Ratishvili was arrested and his house and office searched.

Policemen did not have search notification. Although policemen can search suspect without notification, it can occur only in urgent situation. However, in this particular case there was no necessity and policemen spoke about it when they were interrogated.

None of the policemen, participating in the search, knew the essence of the case. Real number of policemen during the search was much more than it was recorded officially. The main person, who planned and implemented the search, was not interrogated. He has not signed the report either.

Policemen found IDs of different people from various countries in the office of Ratishvili. As soon as Ratishvili stated that he had no information about those IDs he was discharged and launched another investigation about those IDs.

Raul Gamisonia: “In my opinion it was an attempt of forcing Merab to accuse the representatives of the opposition that they were the agents of foreign countries. If Merab has said that he was the agent of a foreign country these documents would have been used as aggregative circumstances against him.”

The preliminary investigation had not been interested in finding who the owner of the number was until December 20, 2007. They did not try to find out who was calling him and what connection the author of these call have with the detained. The case was sent to court for adjudication the next day.

The person, who was calling, was the subscriber of Magticom mobile net. Raul Gamisonia requested the information on the subscriber from the mobile phone operating company. It turned out that the number belonged to Mishiko Ketiladze who is not registered in the National Civil Registry; consequently, he does not have an ID but the ID personal number that is usually written down when a person becomes the subscriber of a mobile phone operator belongs to the person is already dead.

Of course, this fact raised suspects. Therefore, the attorney requested the numbers where Ratishvili was called. Magti refused to issue the information. The judge also refused the attorney from showing the numbers. Finally, although Ratishvili has been in prison for eight months already, the investigation has not inquired who had called the detainee in the first place. However, Ratishvili was arrested and held based on that phone-call…

Trial on the first instance court has been under way for eight months already. It is impossible to claim that Merab Ratishvili is political prisoner in the conditions of current judiciary system. However, Sozar Subari makes the following assessment of the situation.

“The doubt that Ratishvili had drugs planted on him by police is reinforced by the circumstances: After Ratishvili’s detention his office was dispersed and materials from computer were later studied. It is natural that computers could not contain the information about Ratishvili’s drug-addiction, if he really was drug addict or seller in the first place

 

 

News