Terrorists suspects arrested in Georgia

Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza

Tbilisi City Court ordered custody of two natives of Dagestan, Mikhail Kadiyev and Rizvan Omarov, for 50 days; they were arrested in Tbilisi by workers of the anti-terrorist center of the Interior Ministry of Georgia. The accused maintained their innocence and stated in court that they didn’t know how guns and explosives appeared in their flat.

Initially the authorities stated that they “prevented a terrorist attack at the preoperational stage.” However, the prosecution has already accused them only of “illegal purchasing and storing armaments and explosives.” According to the Interior Ministry of Georgia, Kadiyev who is wanted by Interpol has been hiding in Georgia since 2011.

Mamuka Areshidze, expert on the Caucasus, told Vestnik Kavkaza that he knew Kadiyev well: “He came to Georgia in 2011 together with a group of other Chechens. Ruslan Papaskiri who was arrested in Turkey for murder of several Chechens was a member of the group.”Areshidze called Kadiyev and Omarov “executors of the group of Sufiyan Akhmedov who was also arrested in Turkey and wanted by the UK special services in connection with Boris Berezovsky’s case.”

The Interior Ministry didn’t comment on the prepeard terrorist attack in details. “It is not clear whether they prepared a terrorist attack in Georgia or wanted to use the territory of our country for committing an attack in the Russian Federation,” the political scientist Tornike Sharshenidze told Vestnik Kavkaza. “Anyway, the arrest of these two potential terrorists will stop anti-Georgian hysteria in Russia and accusations of the support of terrorism ahead of the Sochi Olympic Games.”

Other experts connect the arrest of Kadiyev and Omarov with the investigation of a special operation of Georgian force structures on the Dagestan part of the Russian-Georgian border in late August 2012 when seven militants who tried to get to the North Caucasus were killed. “Obviously, the current operation is a cut at the former authorities,” Nika Imnaishvili, expert of the information agency GHN, told Vestnik Kavkaza. “The team of Premier Ivanishvili accused the environment of the president and Saakashvili personally of training terrorists for sending them to the North Caucasus.”

Both of the terrorist suspects will be sent to Russia in the nearest future. “If Russia requests them, the request will be studied by the corresponded department of the Ministry of Justice in details,” the head of the press service of the Prosecution, Khatuna Paichadze, told Vestnik Kavkaza.