First president’s son was unlawfully sentenced
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Tuesday, November 29
Georgia’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office stated they would address the Court of Appeals to recheck the sentences of two individuals, one of them being Tsotne Gamakhurdia, the son of Georgia’s late first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia.
The Office said Gamsakhurdia and a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Giorgi Bebua, were “illegally sentenced” under the previous United National Movement Government.
The Office stressed under the new, Georgian Dream authorities, they had re-studied the cases and concluded charges against the persons “were invented.”
In April 2010 Tbilisi City Court found Gamsakhurdia guilty of murder attempt and illegal possession of firearm and sentenced him to nine years and six months in prison.
Gamsakhurdia denied the charges.
When serving his sentence the same year, he was also accused of offering bribes to the prison employee in exchange for handing a letter to his family.
He was found guilty and sentenced to five more years behind bars.
Gamsakhurdia left prison on October 23 2012, as then-President Mikheil Saakashvili pardoned him on the request of Georgia’s Patriarch Ilia II, shortly after the Georgian Dream coalition defeated the United National Movement in the October parliamentary elections.
The Prosecutor’s Office said that according to the evidence they obtained, the bribe-giving charge was also invented.
With regards to Bebua, who had served in the Constitutional Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2010, the Office claimed he had run afoul of the Department’s leadership.
The Prosecutor’s Office says the man was forced to say he took a bribe and was sent to prison for 11 years.
He left prison in 2012 through a Presidential pardon.
