Lawyer says Ukrainian woman charged with trafficking in Georgia was abducted
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Tuesday, July 23
Lawyer of a Ukrainian citizen Yulia Suslyak, who was charged with human trafficking in Georgia back in April, says that the woman was abducted from a train when she was trying to enter Georgia after being released.
Susliak, who was released on July 19 after the case was sent to Ukraine for investigation, had plans to hold a press conference in Tbilisi on July 22 to speak about the “ill-treatment,” she faced in the Georgian prison.
The Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office and the Interior Ministry say that the women tried to enter Georgia from Azerbaijan, while after being released she was able to have left for Ukraine to see her 10 children.
Susliak, 37, was detained on April 8 in a Georgian hospital with her 10 kids and was shortly charged with trafficking as four of the children were born in 2017.
Susliak claimed that six of the ten children were born by surrogate mothers and the biological father of all the 10 children was his husband’s, who lived in Georgia’s Russian-occupied Abkhazia region.
Experts confirmed later that the father of the children was really Suslyak’sia husband.
Georgian police were also concerned by the 11th kid, who is missing, as the woman entered Russia from Ukraine with 11 children.
“Yulia was abducted from a train in the Gardabani district of Georgia on July 20, and when some learned about the incident, she was transported to Azerbaijan, from where she tried to come to Georgia again on July 21. However, she was unlawfully returned,” her lawyer Zurab Todua says.
Susliak states that the people who refused her entry to Georgia mentioned security threats provoked by her.
The Georgian Interior Ministry reported on July 21 that Suslyak was not allowed into the country because of the absence of mandatory documentation and money, and she also failed to explain the reason for crossing the border.
Todua says that Georgian and Ukrainian law enforcers were agreed to detain Suslyak in Ukraine’s airport that is why she left for Azerbaijan and not Ukraine.
“It is impossible the Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office to send all the case materials in two-three days to Ukraine. We believe that there was a verbal agreement between the agencies of the two countries for the detention. Susliak would be released soon, as there is no evidence against her. However, the Ukrainian agencies would say that they investigated the case and the illegalities committed against Suslyak in Georgia would be shadowed,” Todua said.
Todua states that the woman was illegally detained in Georgia, she faced injustice, and “we will not ignore this.”
The Georgian police showed interest to the woman when the minors were transported to the Zugdidi hospital early in April with food intoxication and then were sent to Kutaisi hospital for additional treatment.
All the minors are now in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sent a plane to Georgia back in June to return them.
