GPO Denies Offering Plea Bargaining to Late President’s Son

Tsotne Gamsakhurdia, a son of late president Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who has been charged with espionage in favor of Russia and for alleged conspiracy to overthrow the government, claimed he had gone on hunger strike after prosecutor’s offered him a plea bargaining.

Public Defender’s Office, whose representatives visited Tsotne Gamsakhurdia in his pre-trial detention cell, said quoting Gamsakhurdia that he had been offered to plea guilty of espionage and in exchange charges of dropping charges for conspiracy.

Gamsakhurdia, who denies all charges, said such a proposal was “humiliating” for him, the Public Defender said in a statement.

General Prosecutor’s Office (GPO), however, strongly denied offering plea bargaining to Gamsakhurdia. A spokesperson of GPO told Civil.Ge: “No such fact has ever happened.”

Police arrested Gamsakhurdia on September 3. Gamsakhurdia was reportedly arrested upon arrival from Moscow via Baku. The court then sent him to a two-month pre-trial detention pending investigation.

Charges against Gamsakhurdia were brought in November 2007. On November 7, after riot police broke up anti-government demonstrations, the authorities released a video tape showing Tsotne Gamsakhurdia, who is a brother of Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, the leader of the opposition Freedom Party, meeting with a diplomat from the Russian embassy in Tbilisi. In a separate taped phone conversation, Tsotne Gamsakhurdia tells his brother, Konstantine, how the opposition could lose momentum after gathering 150,000 people outside Parliament on November 2.
 
Similar charges were brought against Shalva Natelashvili, the leader of the opposition Labor Party, in November, but were later dropped.

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