Human Rights Watch Protests Interior Minister’s Initiative

(Tbilisi, November 26, 2002, Civil Georgia)International watchdog “Human Rights Watch” has protested the demand of the Georgian Interior Minister to extend the 12-hour limit for preliminary incommunicado detention.

“What the interior minister is pushing for is a torturers’ charter,” said Elizabeth Andersen, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division. “Both the Council of Europe and the U.N. have demanded more safeguards for detainees in Georgia, but now the Interior Ministry proposes the exact opposite.”

The Georgian interior made a proposal at the Parliament session where he was summoned to comment on Ministry’s activities, recently overshadowed by the high-profile murder of Kakhi Asatiani – a businessman and former soccer star.

The Minister argued that legislators for have adopted a criminal procedure code that “tiues up” his ministry’s hands. He then demanded extension of the 12 hours the code currently allows the police to detain suspects incommunicado, and suggested that his ministry should take back control of pre-trial detention facilities from the Ministry of Justice.

Georgian law enforcement officials commonly torture detainees and breach provisions of the criminal procedure code guaranteeing due process. In April, the U.N. Human Rights Committee expressed concern about “widespread and continuing subjection of prisoners to torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by law enforcement officials and prison officers” in Georgia.

This post is also available in: ქართული (Georgian) Русский (Russian)