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A man pre­vi­ous­ly convicted of domestic violence but released after receiving a pres­i­den­tial pardon has been arrested for the murder of his step­daugh­ter on Tbilisi’s Barnovi Street on Friday. According to police, Vepkhia Bakradze cut the throat of his step­daugh­ter on the street in front of her two children, both below the age of 14.

Twenty-four-year-old Tako Gam­reke­lashvili died on the spot. Bakradze was arrested the following day in the town of Teleti, several kilo­me­tres south of Tbilisi, in Kvemo Kartli region. A knife found by police at the scene has been sent for exam­i­na­tion.

Bakradze, a father of four born in 1972, was jailed for seriously injuring his wife and for violating traffic rules in 2015. He was pardoned by president Giorgi Margve­lashvili in 2017 and released from prison on 25 May 2017, after serving half of his sentence.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Gam­reke­lashvili visited a police station several hours prior to her murder with her mother, who requested a restrain­ing order against Bakradze. Police say they issued the restrain­ing order, after which Gam­reke­lashvili left the police station early for personal reasons.

On Sunday, police arrested another man accused of shel­ter­ing Bakradze in his house in Teleti, for not notifying the police about the murder.

Bakradze was initially charged for pre­med­i­tat­ed murder, pun­ish­able from 7–15 years, which was later qualified as a domestic crime and a ‘murder with par­tic­u­lar cruelty’, pun­ish­able from 16–20 years or life in prison.

Alek­san­dre Darakhvelidze, head of the Legal Depart­ment at the Ministry of Cor­rec­tions, told Rustavi 2 on Sunday that the ministry’s Parole Board had rejected Bakradze’s early release six times.

‘We thought he didn’t meet the necessary criteria for release, for example, the nature of his crime as well as the way he behaved in prison. We pay a lot of attention to the risk of reof­fend­ing. Con­sid­er­ing all these criteria, the board decided to reject him all six times’, he said.

Georgian President Giorgi Margve­lashvili said in a press briefing on Monday that the president’s pardon com­mis­sion refused to pardon Bakradze once, but approved it a second time as the appeal was accom­pa­nied by ‘several important documents’, including a letter from family members.

He said the com­mis­sion initially requested he pardon Bakradze and commute his sentence entirely, but the president decided to reduce the sentence by only a half, and so Bakradze served almost seven more months after this.

Margve­lashvili said the president’s pardon com­mis­sion will tem­porar­i­ly stop pardoning prisoners and work on improving the procedure.

‘We will consult with all parties involved in this process, which are the gov­ern­ment bodies, who give us prisoner profiles, but also groups working on violence against women. They may give us more specific advice on this issue’, he said.

Femicide

Two police officers from the Interior Ministry’s Akhalt­sikhe Depart­ment were arrested last week charged with domestic violence, according to Samkhretis Karibche. On Monday, Akhalt­sikhe District Court placed the two men, who were brothers, in pretrial detention. The incident allegedly occurred on 9 April in the village of Dviri, 25 kilo­me­tres from Akhalt­sikhe in south-west Georgia. One of the men is accused of attacking his brother’s wife and her child following an argument, after which the other brother also beat his wife. If convicted, the pair may face up to three years in prison.

Georgian women’s rights group the Women’s Movement launched a petition on Monday demanding par­lia­ment amend the law and introduce a separate criminal offence for femicide, the killing of a woman or girl on account of her gender, or to introduce gender-motivated murder as an aggra­vat­ing factor, with a pun­ish­ment of 13–20 years or life in prison, as with other aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stances.

The petition also called on the president not to pardon those convicted of femicide or other gender-motivated crimes. The petition, which launched a few hours ago, has almost 500 sig­na­tures.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, police arrested more than 800 people for domestic violence over the past three months and issued restrain­ing orders against more than 1,400.

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