Georgi Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
At the first meeting of the newly-elected Parliament of Georgia, the brother of former Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania Gogla, elected deputy from the "Georgian Dream" coalition, said that the leaders of the former ruling party, the United National Movement, "should at least apologize for all their deeds for 9 years."
Later, Gogla Zhvania said that he had in mind, among other things, the mysterious death of his brother. The MP accused President Mikheil Saakashvili, former State Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Giorgi Baramidze and former Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili of falsifying evidence at the crime scene.
Baramidze was a close friend of Zurab Zhvania in the Green Party founded by them in 1988. Mikheil Saakashvili and Zurab Zhvania together developed the program of Georgian reforms from 1997, when the first signs appeared of an imminent confrontation with President Shevardnadze ended with the "Rose Revolution" of 2003. As for Vano Merabishvili, he was considered the main and most reliable ally of the president, that is, in any case, could not have acted without his knowledge.
Gogla Zhvania said that he believes the president and two key ministers of his government are not murderers or direct customers, but according to him they are guilty of concealing and falsifying evidence at the crime scene. However, it is not clear why and for what purpose they hid and falsified evidence, if they did not order the killing.
Looking back, at night on February 3, 2005, 42-year-old Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania came to a safe house for confidential meetings. According to the official version, having come to the apartment, Zhvania called his administration employee, 22-year-old Raul Yusupov, and invited him to discuss some important issue. When Yusupov came, the bodyguard of Zhvania left them alone. When security officers returned two hours later, they unsuccessfully knocked on the door and called Zhvania and Yusupov; so, in the end, they broke the bars on the window (the apartment was on the ground floor) and finally were able to get over it, finding the dead participants of the meeting. The guards said that Zhvania and Yusupov were sitting in chairs with no signs of life. Examinations (held by, among others, the U.S. FBI) established that the cause of death was carbon monoxide from a faulty "Nikala" gas heater made in Iran.
Gogla Zhvania casts doubt on this version and argues that in fact the scene where the prime minister and the representative of his staff sat in the chairs at the table with brandy and food was completely "staged” by guards on the orders of Saakashvili, Merabishvili and Baramidze. The brother of the late prime minister replied to the question as to why they needed a scene with the dead men sitting at the table and drinking brandy that in fact some attackers killed Zurab Zhvania elsewhere, then brought the body to the safe house and staged a feast after killing Yusupov. This version has a certain popularity in society, since few people are ready to believe in such an absurd death of one of the most influential politicians in Georgia.
One way or another, the new government should consider the matter of the death of Zurab Zhvania. It must conduct further investigations, because now nothing and no one is impeding either Goglev Zhvania, or the new prime minister, or the head of the Interior Ministry or Prosecutor General to investigate the case and to clarify the facts. Baramidze, responding to the accusations of the brother of his deceased friend, said that he was ready to come at the first invitation to a parliamentary commission of inquiry and answer any questions. "They are now the power - and they hold all the cards, let them investigate this case from scratch," the former state minister and now MP said.
