Georgia arrests four opposition party members for forming armed group

[News_Editor]

Georgia arrests four opposition party members for forming armed group

2011-06-23 22:59:46 GMT+7 (ICT)

TBILISI, GEORGIA (BNO NEWS) -- Georgian Interior Ministry on Thursday announced that four men affiliated with an opposition party were arrested for allegedly forming and illegal armed group, Civil Georgia news agency reported.

On Wednesday, the Ministry's counter-intelligence service detained the group of men affiliated with the opposition Georgian Party. Authorities said the men were assembling an armed group intended to provide military back-up to the return of former Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili.

The ex-minister, who is also one of the Georgian Party's leaders, announced his return to the former Soviet state last month but later retracted. He said that the men arrested were Levan Terashvili, his brother Kakhaber, and two other activists of the party's regional branch in eastern Georgia.

According to authorities, Kalashnikov assault rifles, explosives, hand-grenades and shoulder-held missile launchers were seized from Terashvili's residence. Sozar Subari, chairman of the Georgian Party, said that police planted the weapons in the house.

The Interior Ministry said that Okruashvili planned to return to Georgia during the May protests in order to "put an end to the regime of incumbent President Mikheil Saakashvili."

However, the former minister who is in France after requesting political asylum dropped the plan and said he no longer intended to return back to Tbilisi. Okruashvil intended to enter Georgian soil through the breakaway South Ossetia.

Furthermore, authorities alleged that the detainees confessed Okruashvil would have been accompanied by 200 Russian soldiers and planned attacks on Georgian police checkpoints across South Ossetia's border.

The plans were reportedly scrapped after Georgian police intensified patrolling at the village of Jariasheni, less than twenty kilometers (12 miles) away from the town of Gori where Okruashvil was expected to arrive on May 25.

Erosi Kitsmarishvili, political secretary of the opposition Georgian Party, dismissed the police allegations about the armed group and labeled them as "fiction." He also deplored the supposed testimonies from the arrested men.

"We all know how testimonies can be obtained from suspects by the police," said Kitsmarishvili. "The only serious issue that matters is the fate of arrested people, whose families are terrorized."

The Tbilisi Court on Wednesday imposed a two-month pre-trial detention fro the opposition party members who denied all accusations and announce that they will appeal the ruling and show evidence of their innocence on August 12.

In May, mass protests erupted across Georgia which were violently disrupted by security forces, killing at least two people and arresting around 100 others. Anti-government demonstrators were demanding for days the resignation of President Saakashvili.

The unrest has been named as the "Silver Revolution." Saakashvili was elected president in a landslide victory in 2004 after the Rose Revolution, but his popularity has decreased due to a series of corruption scandals in 2007 and the destructive 2008 war with Russia.

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