Georgia will destroy CDs with acts humiliating people recorded, Georgian Deputy Interior Minister Levan Izoria said. In his words, an archive with 635 CDs with 750 hours of blackmail material have been found. Part of them has been sent to prosecutors.
Petre Mamradze, Head of the Institute for Management Strategy, noted that collection of the materials was a shock for the society, though there had been rumours about them before. People were even aware that the police was using agents to provoke certain meetings where cameras had been set beforehand, the expert notes. The expert adds that he has warned authorities that destroying the materials would do no good because the author most likely has copies and getting rid of evidence would only slow the investigation down.
The political analyst emphasizes that all records should be destroyed after a proper investigation. After 2008, he goes on, friends meeting on the street would take out batteries from their cellphone to prove that the are not recording each other. Foreign observers and journalists believing in this were shocked. Mamradze adds that the situation changed dramatically after victory of the Georgian Dream in 2012.
Ramaz Sakvarelidze clarified that only a small portion of the materials will be destroyed. About 28,000 records have been found, he says. Few of them are shots of people’s intimate life, most contain records of meetings. All materials needed for investigating will not be destroyed, assures the expert.
Sakvarelidze believes that people will no longer need to fear. The materials were used to control people, using records of telephone conversations and videos.
