by Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
It seemed as though the Georgian public was hard to shock with anything. But the outrageous video recently posted by an anonymous YouTube user (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFKcnDvMlXs) caused a stormy reaction. Even many supporters of Mikheil Saakashvili and his team admit that they cannot find arguments to justify tthe acts of ex-Minister of the Interior Vano Merabishvili (currently jailed and under trial for four crimes) during the events at the Mukhrovani military base on May 5, 2009.
Back then, officers and soldiers of the Mukhrovani Tank Battalion refused to obey the defense minister's order on training for the upcoming military parade of the Independence Day, marked on May 26. They said that it was outrageous to organize military parades before a commander-in-chief who had started and lost a war a few months ago, while dozens of corpses of their brothers-in-arms were still unburied in South Ossetia. They did not attempt a coup 'ordered by Moscow', they simply refused to obey the order to march. The acts were taken as 'an attempt to take over the power with the MID.'
The base was surrounded by Grad rocket launchers, so the battalion, in order to prevent bloodshed, just gave up. The authorities wanted ex-soldiers of the battalion, Georgy Krialashvili and Koba Otanadze, to be labeled as organizers of the disobedience. "Bring me two corpses and receive a big reward," orders Minister of the Interior Vano Merabishvili, clearly referring to the two ex-soldiers. Besides, he said it on camera, not even worrying that his words were recorded. By all accounts, the video was recorded by a cameraman of the Interior Ministry and the minister did not think that the government (just as life) is not eternal. The government will change and the very same cameraman will hand the record to his new employers for a reward.
The service was indeed priceless because, against the background of the Georgian Dream coalition's failure to resolve economic problems, new materials to prove the 'maniacal repression' by the old regime are in high demand. Georgian society cannot cope with the order to 'bring to corpses,' even suspected of disobeying the order.
Vano Merabishvili has already given his interpretation: it turns out that he did not mean Krialashvili and Otanadze (the first one was killed by a police officer during arrest, the latter survived) when he ordered the murders of two people, he was referring to some 'Russian instructors' sent by the MID for a military coup.
The problem is not that there are no 'Russian instructors' mentioned in criminal cases involving hundreds of soldiers and officers of the Mukhrovani base. Commanders of the battalion, as well as Colonel Otonadze, were sentenced to 15-25 years in jail. The new authorities called the case fabricated, the convicts were recognized as political prisoners and released during the 2013 amnesty.
