GEORGIA’S FORMER PRESIDENT, INTERIOR MINISTER FACE NEW CRIMINAL CHARGES
19:03 10/11/2014 >> LAW
Georgian prosecutor’s office on Monday brought new charges against
former President Mikheil Saakashvili and former Interior Minister
Vano Merabishvili in the criminal case over beating of lawmaker Valery
Gelashvili in July 2005, the republican main prosecutor’s office said,
TASS reported.
“The guilt is aggravated by new facts found in the investigation,”
the main prosecutor’s office said. Saakashvili and Merabishvili were
earlier accused of “abuse of powers with the use of violence.” Now
accusations became harsher “up to deliberate causing of heavy bodily
wounds.”
Georgian prosecutor’s office ruled to bring charges against Saakashvili
and Merabishvili in the Gelashvili battery case on August 5, 2014. The
prosecutor’s office said that republican law enforcement agencies began
probing the attack on Gelashvili in 2005, but no steps were taken to
solve the crime back then. In October 2013, the main prosecutor’s
office resumed investigation of the criminal case over assault on
Gelashvili.
Saakashvili was president of Georgia from January 2004 to November
17, 2013. In mid-November 2013, several days before the expiration
of his presidential term, he left Georgia and has lived mainly in
the United States since.
Former Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili, who held this post from
December 2004 to July 2012, was arrested in Tbilisi in July last year
on accusations of abuse of power and several other offences and is
still kept in custody.
Source: Panorama.am