The Prosecutor General’s Office of Georgia has launched an investigation into “treason” and “sabotage” over remarks made by Giorgi Baramidze, a member of the opposition United National Movement (UNM) and a former interior and defense minister, about prisoner exchange during the 1992-1993 war in Abkhazia.
In an August 7 statement, the Prosecutor General’s Office said the investigation was launched following a complaint from the State Service for Veterans Affairs concerning Baramidze’s remarks on The Birth of Georgia, a YouTube program hosted by opposition Girchi party leader Iago Khvichia.
The investigation is being conducted under Article 307 of Georgia’s Criminal Code, which covers “high treason,” and Article 318, which covers “sabotage” and carries two to four years in prison.
Controversial Remarks
The case stems from Baramidze’s appearance on a more than three-and-a-half-hour-long episode of The Birth of Georgia, published on YouTube on July 18, in which he discussed his role during the war in Abkhazia and efforts to secure the release of Georgian prisoners. At the time, Baramidze was a Georgian parliament member.
Recalling the capture of Georgian fighters following the fall of Gagra, a city in Abkhazia, Baramidze said he decided to travel to Sokhumi with the help of the International Committee of the Red Cross and eventually entered a detention facility in Gudauta, where he met de facto Abkhaz officials and helped arrange the release of Georgian prisoners.
Baramidze said the exchange process later stalled because the Georgian side had no prisoners to offer in return. “They [the separatists] stopped giving us prisoners, because we didn’t have prisoners. Our side was not taking prisoners,” he said.
Asked by Khvichia why, Baramidze replied: “They [our side] were shooting [them].”
Khvichia then asked why this had been necessary. Baramidze responded this was not necessary, but that “when your cousin is killed, your brother is killed, your friend is killed, it is very hard to hold back emotion in that situation.”
Asked whether the same was happening on the other side, Baramidze said there was “discipline” among the separatist forces, attributing it to “Russian discipline” and saying they were taking prisoners.
He also recalled negotiating exchanges with Beslan Kobakhia, whom he described as his de facto counterpart from the separatist side, and said he had personally gone to the front line on several occasions to prevent captured individuals from being shot so they could later be exchanged.
Baramidze, UNM Defend Remarks
A day before the Prosecutor General’s Office announced the investigation, Baramidze published a video statement on Facebook, saying parts of his interview had been circulated “out of context” and misunderstood.
Baramidze said he had been describing the early weeks of the war, when he became involved in prisoner exchanges and found that the Georgian side had no prisoners to exchange.
“I said that the other side was taking prisoners, and we did not have prisoners because our side was shooting — that’s the word I used,” he said, stressing, however, that “shooting” did not mean that “our state and the Georgian army were shooting them,” but rather that Georgian forces were not taking prisoners during a “mortal, life-and-death struggle with the enemy.”
Baramidze also argued that the practice could not be attributed to the Georgian state or army, which he said “did not actually exist at the time,” and did not constitute a crime.
In a separate Facebook post, Baramidze said his account was truthful and could not harm Georgia’s national interests, arguing that Russia’s aggression and ethnic cleansing in Georgia had already been condemned by international organizations.
Following the Prosecutor’s Office announcement, the UNM condemned the investigation, calling it politically motivated and a “slanderous and absurd case” serving “the political goals of the [Bidzina] Ivanishvili regime and the objectives of Russian propaganda.”
“This fabricated case is yet another confirmation of this regime’s Russian nature,” the party said in a statement, adding that it would oppose what it considers any illegal action against Baramidze “through legal and political means.”
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