Not to share the same cell
By Messenger Staff
Tuesday, June 28
Incarcerated ex-Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili and ex-Tbilisi Mayor Gigi Ugulava were refused to be put in a cell together, Ugulava’s lawyer Beka Basilaia said.
Lawyers requested that Tbilisi City Court put former Prime Minister and Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili and former Mayor of Tbilisi Gigi Ugulava in a cell together.
According to them, the placement of Gigi Ugulava and Vano Merabishvili in separate cells constitutes a form of inhumane treatment and torture.
The lawyers had appealed to the Ministry of Corrections with the same request, though the Ministry refused their request on the motive that Vano Merabishvili and Gigi Ugulava are charged in one and the same case. The lawyers say the City Court used the same argument to ignore their request.
Merabishvili was arrested in 2013. Next year Tbilisi City Court found him guilty of abuse of power in the notorious murder case of Sandro Girgvliani in 2006.
In the same trial, he was also found guilty of fraudulent actions carried out by an official and sentenced for both charges to three years in prison.
In February 2014 he was also sentenced to 4 years and 6 months in jail in connection to the violent break up of a protest rally in Tbilisi in May 2011 during his tenure as Interior Minister.
In September 2015 Gigi Ugulava was been sentenced to 4 years and 6 months in prison after being found guilty of misspending public funds while serving as the mayor of the capital city.
