Oppositionist MP Was Physically Assaulted

Last night Merab Khurtsidze, a member of the Parliamentary fraction “Our Georgia”, was attacked by five strangers and they beat him. The MP said in his conversation with Medianews that the young men of about 30-35-years-old were waiting for him in front of his house when he got home by his car. He also added that he could not recognize any of the attackers. The attackers were not armed.

The injured MP was taken to the Otar Ghudushauri Hospital where doctors concluded that he had high blood pressure, felt sick and had some bruises on his face and head. At this stage he needed hospitalization, however his overall health condition was satisfactory.

Leader of the fraction “For Our Georgia”, Valeri Gelbakhiani stated that the incident was some sort of political revenge. He stated that Khurtsidze had been threatened several times before.

“It was a message from the government which started its presidential campaign with terror and will also end it with terror. We have been threatened personally by anonymous people; they threatened us with raiding the house, kidnapping and physical assault. As far as we know, yesterday an initiative group introduced Badri Patarkatsishvili as a presidential candidate and the first reaction to it was beating Khurtsidze. He had assumed a position in parliament as a member of the leading party; but he left the National Movement after he joined our fraction. The leading party was oppressing him for him leaving the party. We do not really care about the reasons for attacking the MP, we believe that it was political revenge,” said Gelbakhiani.

The leader of the fraction said that last night they appealed to Nino Burjanadze, the Interim President of Georgia, and Vano Merabishvili, the Minister of the Internal Affairs, about the incident. “Khurtsidze and I are often times being threatened over the phone. As almost all phones are wiretapped throughout Georgia, it should not be difficult to find those responsible. But when the government uses excessive violence, I am completely sure that the incident will not be reacted to at all,” said Gelbakhiani.

The leader of the fraction intends to petition the Head of the European Commission Delegation to Georgia. “The first issue in my petition will be the beating of Khurtsidze. Other problematic issues will be future elections and current violations. Yesterday, we got registration forms for presidential candidates at the Central Election Commission which must be printed at printing shops. However, we found out that almost all printing shops are ordered not to print the forms delivered by the representatives of Badri Patarkatsishvili. Although one of them initially accepted our offer, two hours later they called us and refused. The reason for this was that they had been threatened. We tried other printing offices as well but received similar replies from all of them. Thus we had to make copies of the forms,” said Gelbakhiani. 

Konstantine Gabashvili, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs, member of the parliamentary majority, condemned the incident in his conversation with Medianews. However he does not agree with the statement that Khurtsidze was assaulted for political reasons.

Gabashvili said that it is not excluded that it was an ordinary argument between men. He also said that the incident was caused by activists of Khurtsidze’s own fraction and the aim of it was to increase tensions.

Nino Tarkhnishvili, Tbilisi