Public Defender’s Office Opposes Move to Dismantle Special Investigation Service

Georgia’s Public Defender’s Office has voiced objections to a legislative proposal backed by the ruling Georgian Dream government to dismantle the country’s Special Investigation Service (SIS). On the contrary, the Office stressed the need to retain and strengthen the independence of the agency.

Speaking before Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee on May 22, Tatuli Todua, a representative of the Ombudsman’s Office, said the service should be retained to investigate crimes committed by police officers and other officials. As Todua noted, responding to crimes committed by representatives of law enforcement agencies in Georgia has been a serious challenge and problem for a long time, and the investigations conducted in this direction lacked a component of institutional independence.

“For a very long time, the response to crime by law enforcement officials remained a serious problem and challenge in Georgia,” she said. “Instead of abolishing the Special Investigation Service, it should be strengthened,” said Tatuli Todua on behalf of the Public Defender,” she added.

According to the representative of the Public Defender’s Office, the ongoing investigations into crimes committed by employees of law enforcement agencies within the framework of the Prosecutor’s Office have been studied repeatedly, and the Prosecutor’s Office’s investigation into such cases is not up to par.

The draft bill, reviewed in its first parliamentary reading, would fully dissolve the SIS and transfer its ongoing investigations and future responsibilities to the Prosecutor’s office. The agency confirmed to media that it would be absorbed into the prosecutorial system but declined to provide additional information, saying the details would be outlined in the legislative initiative submitted to the one-party parliament.

“We also think that, since 2022, those crimes which were assigned to its mandate and greatly burdened this agency and caused a misdirection of its resources. We have always believed that this agency should have been focused on crimes committed by law enforcement officers and not on those crimes which were later added to it — be it domestic violence or other crimes committed by private individuals,” Todua added.

The SIS, launched in 2022 as an independent investigative body under the 2017-2020 Association Agenda between the European Union and Georgia, was tasked with effectively, timely, and independently probing violent crimes and ill-treatment by officials. It is, however, widely seen as lacking independence, showing negligence, and thus complicit in human rights violations, as no police officers have been charged for targeting protesters over the past year.

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