MoD: Four Georgian Servicemen Released

The Georgian Ministry of Defense said the South Ossetian side had released four Georgian soldiers detained last night. It gave no further details.

The South Ossetian side has yet to comment.

Temur Iakobashvili, the Georgian state minister for reintegration, said before the soldiers were released, that “intensive talks” were ongoing to facilitate their release.

He suggested that a group of ambassadors from the OSCE-members states based in Vienna, which is currently paying a visit to Georgia, would help to facilitate the release. The group paid a pre-planned visit to Tskhinvali and held talks with the leadership of breakaway South Ossetia on July 8.

“I hope our soldiers will return home together with the OSCE ambassadors,” Iakobashvili said at a news conference, which was held at 4:30pm local time in Tbilisi on July 8.

He added that he hoped the incident would be resolved by the end of the day. He said that the Georgian side was also in intensive talks with the Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in the region over the matter.

Meanwhile, at about 5:30pm local time on July 8, it was reported that President Saakashvili had convened an emergency session of the National Security Council. Saakashvili’s remarks at the session were aired by the Georgian Public Broadcaster and Rustavi 2 TV station in their 6pm news bulletins, after the Georgian soldiers had been released.

“I instruct the Interior Ministry – if the illegal group [referring to the authorities in breakaway South Ossetia] does not release the soldiers – to have our police secure their release. I instruct the Interior Ministry to immediately prepare for the release of our illegally kidnapped soldiers through the use of all legal means at your disposal,” Saakashvili said at the NSC session.

“The illegal detention of our soldiers can only be seen as a kidnapping by bandit gangs. These bandits are abusing our patience and our desire to maintain peace in the region,” he said.

“This is no longer 2004 when our soldiers were detained and publicly humiliated,” Saakashvili added, referring to the detention of up to 50 Georgian servicemen by the South Ossetian side in July 2004. The detained Georgian soldiers were escorted to the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali, paraded on the main street and forced to kneel at gunpoint. The spectacle was broadcast by Russian TV stations.

“I want to tell these bandits that we will not tolerate it [the detention of Georgian soldiers], we will not step back; they should expect a response from us if our soldiers are not released,” Saakashvili said.

Immediately after airing Saakashvili’s remarks, the GPB reported on the release of the Georgian servicemen, but Rustavi 2 TV failed to do so.

The four soldiers – a colonel, a corporal and two sergeants – were detained by South Ossetian militiamen before midnight on July 7.

The South Ossetian Press and Information Committee reported early on July 8 that the servicemen had been detained close to the village of Okona in the Znauri district on the South Ossetian side of the administrative border.

It claimed all four were from the artillery brigade of the Georgian army and were conducting “a reconnaissance operation related with artillery fire correction” in South Ossetia – later denied by the Georgian Ministry of Defense.

The Georgian MoD, which initially had maintained silence over the incident, confirmed the detention of its soldiers at about 2:30pm local time on July 8. The MoD said that the soldiers were from a logistics brigade, and had been “abducted by an illegal armed gang, consisting of South Ossetian and North Caucasian militiamen.”