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Soso Gogashvili Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison

On April 4, the Tbilisi City Court found the former deputy head of the State Security Service, Ioseb (Soso) Gogashvili guilty on all five charges and sentenced him to 5 years in prison.

Soso Gogashvili was arrested late at night on July 16, 2022, as a result of a special operation carried out at his home. The prosecutor’s office initially charged him with abuse of authority, obtaining, storing, and disseminating personal data by using one’s official position, and the illegal purchase and storage of firearms and ammunition. He was later also charged with deliberately disclosing state secrets and illegally obtaining and keeping secrets of private life.

Following Gogashvili’s arrest, his wife, Tea Martkoplishvili, stated that law enforcement officers had placed one firearm under the bed and another in the closet, along with “a flash drive, a computer, written documents and a memory card” on the bedside table.

Gogashvili denied the allegations against him and from prison shared revealing information about the authorities. Among other things, he implicated the Georgian Dream founder, Bidzina Ivanishvili, in the 2017 kidnapping of Azerbaijani journalist Afgan Mukhtarli and the beating of former Deputy Interior Minister Gela Khvedelidze. He also accused Ivanishvili of threatening to “destroy the family.”

Notably, the arrest of the former deputy head of the security service was preceded by the leaking of a secret audio recording made by the pro-government TV presenter and singer Gia Gachechiladze (Ucnobi). According to the description of the recording, journalists from the “Mtavari Arkhi” TV company are discuss reporting on the “secret files” provided to them by Soso Gogashvili.

On July 15, Soso Gogashvili took to Facebook to expose the ruling party’s involvement in the rigging of the 2021 local elections. He claimed to have provided evidence of the “whole structure” of the election fraud to “all relevant organizations” and linked eyewitnesses and witnesses to the media and related organizations. “What filth you are cooking. Till now, you blamed me for many things ruined and messed up by you. Now the past will come back to haunt you and everyone (big and small) will have their share and you will not be able to blame me for this cooked-up filth,” he said.

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

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