Georgia’s ex-minister charged with torture

TBILISI (AFP) ― Georgia’s former defense minister faces new charges of torturing soldiers amid the first major case against officials from the ex-Soviet state’s recently ousted government, prosecutors said Tuesday.

Ex-defense chief Bacho Akhalaia had already been charged with abuse of office and is being held in pre-trial detention for two months in a case he says is motivated by political revenge against officials from President Mikheil Saakashvili’s former administration.

Chief prosecutor Archil Kbilashvili said the new charges relate to the alleged inhuman treatment in 2010 of a group of soldiers who were physically and verbally abused and then locked up in a bathroom without food for 36 hours.

Akhalaia was previously charged over separate allegations of holding a man captive and assaulting him in September 2011 and over abuse of servicemen in October of the same year.

Army chief of staff Giorgi Kalandadze has also been charged over the October 2011 incident with misuse of office for allegedly abusing soldiers, but has been released on bail.

The accused have denied the charges.

“What is happening to me is clearly a political process which has nothing in common with justice,” Akhalaia told Georgia’s InterPressNews agency from jail on Monday.

The case comes after billionaire Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili’s new government took office last month following its defeat of Saakashvili’s party in Oct. 1 parliamentary polls.

Ivanishvili’s administration has vowed to tackle allegations of wrongdoing under the Saakashvili government, which dominated Georgia for nine years, but has also promised not to conduct witch-hunts against former officials.

Close Saakashvili ally Akhalaia held a series of top positions in the former government and became deeply unpopular with some of its opponents who accused him of human rights violations, which he denies.

The latest prosecutions have drawn worry from some of Georgia’s Western allies recently.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Monday he is “extremely concerned about the development we have seen since (the elections), not least related to recent arrests of political opponents in Georgia.”

European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso meanwhile urged Ivanishvili to avoid “selective justice.”