MIA Purges Police, Removes Checkpoints in Shida Kartli

Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili said on September 24 that all the police checkpoints in the Shida Kartli region will be dismantled, except those in the immediate vicinity of the territory under the control of the authorities in breakaway South Ossetia.

He also said that the special purpose units of the Interior Ministry, which are deployed in the Shida Kartli region, mainly in the South Ossetian conflict zone, will be purged.

?We?d be better off to have newly recruited, inexperienced officers as opposed to these corrupt [policemen],? he said.

Merabishvili explained that this decision was based on the existence of ?persisting corruption among the police officers? deployed in the conflict zone.

He said that recently the Interior Ministry?s Department of Constitutional Security discovered several cases wherein police officers stationed at checkpoints in Ergneti and Tkviavi, both located in the South Ossetian conflict zone, were taking bribes from smugglers.

The Interior Minister said that instead of checkpoints the police will control the sitiation in the region ?with a mobile patrol of the special purpose units.?

The reshuffle will not concern the leadership of the local police. Merabishvili said that he has ?reprimanded and warned the top-level leadership to improve the situation.?

In March, Aleksandre Sukhitashvili, the Chief of Police of the Shida Kartli region, and his deputies, as well as the chiefs of the police departments of all the districts located in the Shida Kartli region, were sacked after President Saakashvili demanded an intensification of the fight against contraband and alleged that some local, high-level police officials were involved in the smuggling that occurs there.

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