16:58, 27 October 2003

Georgian police officers detained head of "Fair Elections" non-government organization

In Tbilisi on October 24, officers of law-enforcement organs detained Zurab Chiaberashvili, executive director of the local non-government organization "Fair Elections", and conveyed him to a city police station.

Chiaberashvili, who was released later, told he had gone in a taxi and had witnessed his driver's bribing a road police officer. The NGO director said he "could not but had interfered in the situation, as he is a citizen of Georgia." As a result, his mobile phone was taken away and he was conveyed to the police station. Zurab Chiaberashvili stressed his detention had been conducted illegally, without an appropriate deed being drawn up. A case on this incident has been launched by the Georgian Interior Ministry's General Inspection. Chiaberashvili also reported he wrote a statement on the fact of bribery he had witnessed and pointed a number of the police car that he had been conveyed to the police station in.