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Physical Assault of Citizens by the Police

May 20, 2015
 
Natia Gogolashvili

Representatives of Human Rights Center held a press conference on May 19 about recent facts of physical assault of citizens by policemen. The human rights defenders talked about illegal activities of the police against Tornike Margiani and Alexander Akhalkatsi. 

According to the executive director of Human Rights Center Aleko Tskitishvili, it is necessary to create an independent investigation body which will investigate facts of abuse of power by the law enforcement officers. “When Human Rights Center, as a human rights organization, gets involved in the case and requests timely and effective investigation, the law enforcement bodies does not timely and effectively respond to our appeals and investigation into these cases are unreasonably prolonged. According to Human Rights Center and other NGOs, the best solution is to have an independent investigation body, which will investigate similar cases. We see the investigations into these f cases by the general inspection of the Ministry of Internal Affairs are biased and sometimes they are never finalized.”

“Human Rights Center and I personally have dealt with seven cases of physical assault of citizens by the policemen and it can be said that it has acquired perturbing tendency. As for the two recent cases, they refer to citizens Tornike Margiani and Alexander Akhalkatsi. Tornike Margiani was brutally beaten in the Old Tbilisi district police unit # 3 . They tied him to the chair and hit him in the head and belly,” said deputy executive director of Human Rights Center Tamar Avaliani. 

“When they brought him to the police department, they, on purpose, took him to the room where cameras are not installed. Then, four people beat him brutally. Tornike can identify two of them. We know the name of one of them, it is Giorgi Davitadze. The second person was a stout person and Tornike can easily recognize him during identification. He will not be able to identify the other two, because he was severely beaten,” the mother of Tornike Margiani, Nata Tarkhan-Mouravi said. 

According to Aleksandre Akhalkatsi, on May 9 he and his friend were physically and verbally assaulted by the uniformed police officers at Guramishvili Avenue.  As Akhalkatsi states, the officers work at the police department of Gldani-Nadzaladevi district. He said he can recognize all of them.
 
“Under the Constitution I have right to walk in the streets of Tbilisi any time and neither criminal police is obliged to raid. In fact, they illegally restricted my freedom for half an hour, I was surrounded by people who were beating and assaulting me. All of them are guilty and all of them must have authorities suspended until the prosecutor’s office ends the investigation, “ _ says Aleksandre Akhalkatsi.
 
According to the deputy executive director of Human Rights Center Tamar Avaliani, the Parliament, in particular the Human Rights Committee, does not implement effective parliamentary control of investigations into the alleged facts of  misconduct by police officers.
 
“We believe, the state must investigate these facts timely and effectively. I would like to underline very passive role and ineffectiveness of the Human Rights Committee of the Parliament to use its parliamentary control over the investigation into the cases where, allegedly the police officers abuse power,”_ said Tamar Avaliani.

Human Rights Center appeals to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia and bodies of the prosecutor’s office to immediately investigate the crime committed against the citizens. 

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