Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
Tbilisi State Court delivered its verdict on the case of breaking up the opposition rally on May 26th, 2011, when 4 people were killed. The main and the only accused person was the former Interior Minister, Vano Merabishvili. His lawyers built their defense on an idea that it was impossible to sentence the minister for an order to break up a rally (which actually violated laws, as it took place on Rustaveli Avenue where a parade devoted to the Independence Day should have taken place), if no certain policemen who beat people violently were brought to account.
However, it is not beneficial for the authorities to judge common policemen: the ruling coalition may also need force, and if an ordinary policeman is punished, his colleagues will think twice before fulfilling an order. After a long trial, Judge Khatuna Kharchilova sentenced Merabishvili to prison for six years. According to the amnesty of 2012, the term was reduced to 4.5 years. However, the former minister risks spending much more time behind bars. The point is that he has already been sentenced to five years in prison for using budget money for election campaign of Mikhail Saakashvili’s party – the United National Movement. According to Georgian laws, verdicts on two different cases can “overlap”, when a longer term of imprisonment absorbs a shorter term; moreover, they can be summed up, i.e. a convict can spend a sum of terms in prison, which were delivered by different judges on different cases.
The lawyer of the former minister, Georgy Chiviashvili, told Vestnik Kavkaza that if the judge doesn’t make a decision on “overlapping” of verdicts, Vano Merabishvili will have to stay in prison for 9.5 years. 10-15 years more may be added to this term. The former minister, one of the closes supporters of the former president is accused of protection of murders of a young banker Sandro Girgvilani, falsification of evidence on the death of the late prime minister Zurab Zhvania, and other crimes. Thus, Merabishvili’s term may grow up to 20-25 years.
This is how a career of one of the most powerful Georgian politicians of the recent past ended. He is an author of the famous police reform which caused interest in many post-Soviet countries, including Russia. Vano Merabishvili used to be called “a back of the statehood” in Georgia, without whom the country “would hardly survive.” However, it was six years ago in an absolutely different era.
