The Interior Ministry has denied any involvement in a raid on a protest venue outside the presidential residence late on June 18 and said that police had only intervened after a clash erupted between the local residents and protesters camped in tents and mocked up prisons cells there.
Shota Utiashvili, head of the Interior Ministry’s information and analytical department, told Civil.Ge on June 19, that the incident started with a verbal argument between a group of local residents and protesters, which he said grew into a scuffle with some locals being beaten. He also said that local residents responded with smashing mocked up prison cells on the protest venue.
Opposition activists said that dozens of men, some in police uniforms and others in plain cloths, raided a protest venue. Television pictures aired by Maestro TV showed torn banners and damaged improvised prison cells.
Public Defender, Sozar Subari, who visited the protest venue shortly after the incident suggested that the police would probably start claiming that it was a scuffle between the protesters and locals, “but that’s not true.”
Eka Beselia of the Movement for United Georgia, whose party activists, among others, are camped outside the presidential residence, said that it would be possible to find out exactly who attacked protesters if the Interior Ministry made footage from CCTV cameras installed at the protest venue public.
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