Tskhinvali Holds Four Teens in Two-Month Pre-Trial Detention

Four Georgian teenagers, detained on November 4, are held in two-month pre-trial detention in Tskhinvali, according to the announcement posted on the breakaway authorities’ official website on November 19.

A deputy envoy of the South Ossetian leader for post-conflict resolution issues, Merab Chigoev, said in remarks posted on the website that the four minors were sent to pre-trial custody ten days ago and they will remain there for a month and twenty more days.

He said the four boys, between 14 and 17 years old, face charges related with “illegal crossing of the state border and illegal procession of explosives.”

Meanwhile, on November 19 Georgian officials, representatives from the breakaway region’s authorities and Russian military officials on the ground were expected to meet in presence of EU monitors in the village of Ergneti in frames of Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism.

The meeting, however, was thwarted after Tskhinvali refused to participate.

Merab Chigoev said that the failure to receive information on whereabouts of South Ossetian citizens, claimed to be under the Georgian detention, was the reason behind the Tskhinvali’s refusal to participate in the meeting on November 19. Tskhinvali says that two South Ossetians – Ibragim Laliev and Lavrenti Kaziev were detained by the Georgian police in October, 2008 and the third one, Vladimir Eloev – in May, 2009.

The breakaway region’s authorities, according to their official website, on November 17 and on November 19 requested the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to verify a story, which was broke by RFE/RL, according to which three Ossetians are held under the police custody in a private house in the town of Gori.

On November 10, a newly launched RFE/RL’s Russian-language program targeting audience in Georgia’s two breakaway regions, Ekho Kavkaza, reported that relatives of three South Ossetians appealed the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights demanding from the Georgian authorities to provide information about the whereabouts of the three men.

According to the same report, this summer the Georgian side released three Ossetians from police custody on bail in order to hand them over to the South Ossetian side; but the swap of detained persons failed in last minute and since then whereabouts of the three men remained unknown.

Citing an official document sent as a response to ECHR on October 23 by the Georgian government, the RFE/RL’s report says that the three Ossetians remain in a private house “under the police supervision” since August 4. Citing the same document, the report says that the Georgian side explained the need for keeping the three men under the police supervision with the risk that they might again commit the crimes for which they had been arrested – two of them for illegal possession of arms and one for taking a policeman in hostage. The Georgian side, according to the same document, refuses to hand over the three men to the South Ossetian side citing that they may be punished in Tskhinvali for cooperation with the Georgian law enforcement agencies.

EU Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM) said that it regretted about Tskhinvali’s decision not to attend the meeting in Ergneti on November 19.

“Continued dialogue is the only way forward”, Hansjörg Haber, head of EUMM said.

The mission also said that regular exchanges among Georgian, Russian, South Ossetian, OSCE and EU participants within the framework of the Incident Prevention and Reaction Mechanism “have helped bring home a number of people detained on both sides of the administrative boundary line.”

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