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A Year Has Passed since Sandro Girgvliani Was Murdered

January 26, 2007

A year has passed since January 27, 2006 when Sandro Girgvliani, the head of the International Economics Department of the United Georgian Bank, was murdered.

Having left Sharden Bar, Girgvliani and his colleague, Levan Bukhaidze, were kidnapped from the Leselidze Street in Tbilisi by car and driven to the Okrokhana Cemetery (near Tbilisi).  Girgvliani was shot by a gun and stubbed by a knife and died on the scene of crime. Bukhaidze managed to survive.
The Tbilisi City Court discussed the case of the murder and sentenced three former high ranking police officers, Avtandil Aftsiauri, Aleksandre Ghachava and Mikheil Bibiluridze to seven-year-imprisonment and Grigol Alania to eight-year-imprisonment. The Tbilisi Appeal Court did not bring any changes in the verdict while discussing it after the appeal.

Today, Shalva Shavgulidze, the lawyer for the Girgvliani’s family, stated at the press conference that the crime was given wrong qualification during the preliminary investigation. According to the qualification, Girgvliani was badly injured what resulted into a death because he was not paid attention. However, the lawyer claimed that it was a premeditated murder in the gravest circumstances. More precisely, a group of people committed the crime with particular cruelty and self-interest. Besides that, it was an ordered murder. Shavgulidze said that both instances of the court did not carry out proper investigation on the crime in order to discover real criminals. Under the current legislation, only Prosecutor’s Office can mediate on changing the qualification of the crime. Neither victim family, nor courts have been granted with the aforementioned right. Shavgulidze stated that the Prosecutor’s Office did not show any interest to carry out additional investigation in order to change the qualification and find out the truth.

Sandro Girgvliani’s mother, Irina Enukidze hopes that in 2007 all criminals will be punished.

Source: Media.Ge

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