Former Georgian Interior Minister Irakli Okruashvili has been sentenced to seven years in prison over the 2004 killing of 19-year-old Buta Robakidze by police.
Okruashvili received his sentence on Wednesday on charges of abuse of power.
The case involving the death of Buta Robakidze in 2004 has been under consideration at Tbilisi City Court for six years, according to RFE/RL.
Okruashvili, who at the time of the killing was Interior Minister, was accused of giving orders to high-ranking officials to cover up Robakidze’s killing.
Okruashvili’s lawyer, Mamuka Chabashvili, told IPN that Robakidze was killed after a police officer ‘accidentally discharged a firearm’. Following his death, the authorities claimed that they found that the teenager’s friends carried weapons. Prosecutors claimed that Okruashvili ordered Interior Ministry officials to plant the weapons on the group.
Chabashvili added that the case relied heavily on the testimony of Temur Mikadze, a deceased former Tbilisi Patrol Police Chief. The lawyer claims that Mikadze changed his testimony in the case several times.
‘The verdict states that Irakli Okruashvili ordered the planting of weapons — based on Mikadze’s statement that he personally interpreted the instruction that way. Previously, he had given completely different testimonies. You cannot issue a verdict based on “I understood it that way” ’, Chabashvili said.
The second defendant in the case was former Prosecutor General Zurab Adeishvili, who, according to Civil Georgia, oversaw the investigation into Robakidze’s killing. He was acquitted by the court on Wednesday.
Chabashvili explained to OC Media that the seven-year sentence Okruashvili received was commuted as a result of an amnesty law adopted in 2012, under which the article Okruashvili has now been convicted of — abuse of power — is reduced by one quarter.
Additionally, Chabashvili continued, the court counted the 10 months Okruashvili had spent in pre-trial detention between 2019 and 2020 on charges of group violence during Gavrilov’s Night into his sentence.
With the amnesty and the time already spent in detention, Okruashvili’s final sentence amounted to four years and five months.
Okruashvili is currently also serving an eight month sentence for refusing to appear before a parliamentary commission created by the ruling Georgian Dream party to investigate the opposition.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
