The Georgian special services have reported about the prevention of a terrorist act, which could have led to far-reaching consequences for the entire South Caucasus. The Department of the State Security Service counterintelligence of the Georgian Interior Ministry has arrested five people on charges of preparing an explosion at the strategic gas pipeline from Russia to Armenia, through which a small amount of natural gas is also supplied to Georgia.
According to the Georgian Interior Ministry, Beka Bekauri, Mindia Vashakmadze, Jaba Melkadze and Nukri Chkadua were detained as they withdrew several items of TNT, Kalashnikovs, fuses and other devices necessary for the implementation of sabotage from a cache near the village of Saguramo. According to the special services, the suspects were planning to lay four capsules with TNT under the Russian-Georgian-Armenian gas pipeline at a point where it crosses this area not under the ground, but in open terrain.
During the preliminary interrogation one of the detainees, Koba Bekauri, fully admitted his guilt. A police officer, Levan Mamporiya, has also been arrested in connection with the case, but unlike the five others, who were captured in the immediate vicinity of the pipeline, the police officer has not been charged with terrorism, but in abetting. A seventh member of the group, Irakli Bagishvili, has been accused of ‘failing to report a criminal intent.’ As a preventative measure the Tbilisi City Court has opted for two months imprisonment for all the detainees.
All seven alleged terrorists were members of the organization ‘Caucasian House’, which advocates for the Caucasus to leave Russia's sphere of influence. They were actively communicating via Facebook with fighters of the ‘Georgian Legion’ , participating in the war against the Donetsk People's Republic in Ukraine, and sent the mercenaries uniforms bought at Tbilisi markets.
Judging by their statements on social networks, the members of ‘Caucasian House’ thought that blowing up the strategic gas pipeline would be one of the methods of ‘expelling Russia from the Caucasus’. Georgian counterintelligence had been following them since the beginning of the year, but did not take any actions until they got the opportunity to catch the attackers red-handed as moved to the immediate implementation of the long-planned violent action that could have led to the discrediting of the Georgian authorities, and even to a diplomatic conflict between Georgia and Armenia.
The basic version of the investigation was the connection of the suspects with a group of former Georgian soldiers operating in Donbass. The prosecutor leading the investigation told reporters that the cache from which the criminals took the explosives and other weapons was ‘an official, albeit a secret vault’ of the Ministry of Defense, and the members of the group could have learned about its location only from former employees of the Georgian Defense Ministry.
