Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
All Georgian TV-channels start their news programs in the Netherlands these days, where local law-enforcement agencies arrested the former head of the head office of the Department of Security and Military Police Special Tasks of the Joint Headquarters of the Armed Forces of Georgia, Georgy Dgebuadze.
Dgebuadze was arrested at the request of the Georgian General Prosecution, as he was a defendant in several criminal cases. The military police was the last job (before the change of power in the country) of this powerful person of Mikhail Saakashvili’s epoch. Previously he was a top official in the Constitutional Security Department (CSD) of the Interior Ministry – a powerful Georgian special service which won notoriety in society.
The main accusation against Georgy Dgebuadze is participation in the Navtlugi operation, which shocked the country by its cruelty: on January 12, 2006, the special forces of the CSD were sent to a landslide in the Navtlugi district of the capital. Data Akhalaya, the head of the Department, personally headed the operation. He explained to soldiers that a group of criminals was planning to escape from jail. Later, the statement was not confirmed by anything.
The special operation turned into a cruel execution of three people. According to witnesses, Data Akhalaya and Georgy Dgebuadze, who held the position of the head of the Special Operations Office, fired finishing shots into the bodies of the killed. Akhalaya has also been arrested, but in Greece. The Georgian General Prosecution is trying to extradite him from the country.
For Dgebuadze, it wasn’t the first or the last special operation. He was involved in many scandalous cases, including suppression of a riot in Ortachala prison on March 27th, 2006, when dozens of prisoners were killed, and a well-known attempt on the life of the late businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili. In autumn 2007 the TV-company “Imedi”, which belonged to Patarkatsishvili, published an audio recording of a conversation between Dgebuadze and a Chechen field commander, Uvais Ahmadov. Dgebuadze told Ahmadov that Patarkatsishvili and the opposition which was sponsored by the businessmen were a big obstacle for the Georgian authorities. According to the official, Patarkatsishvili bargained with the Kremlin at the expense of the Georgians, promising to destabilize the situation in the pro-Western country in exchange for closing the criminal case of “Autovaz against Patarkatsishvili and Berezovsky.”
The talk took place in a period when people were protesting in Tbilisi and demanded Saakashvili’s resignation. Ahmadov didn’t answered the proposal, but secretly recorded the talk and gave the recording to Patarkatsishvili at Istanbul airport. Patrakatsishvili sent the recording to the Sunday Times in London, which published it on its website.
However, the scandal didn’t influence Dgebuadze’s career – supporters of Saakashvili called the case “a dirty insinuation by Russian special forces.” At the same time, the main hero of the story couldn’t reach the highest positions in force structures, but he turned into the “Malyuta Skouratov” of Saakashvili.
Today it is difficult to understand what was true in the story of Dgeubadze, but he cannot dispel his image as an expert on special operations.
