Georgian police have arrested nine people, eight of whom are minors, in an alleged case of group violence toward a minor. The group of suspects are thought to be affiliated with a local neo-Nazi movement.
According to the police, due to a past disagreement, one of the detainees deceived the victim into coming to an abandoned building near a metro station in Tbilisi. The victim was then ambushed by the rest of the group, who physically assaulted him.
‘They also inflicted injuries on various parts of his body with a [knife], and recorded a video on a mobile phone depicting the violence, physical and mental coercion, and degrading acts against him’, Georgia’s Interior Ministry said.
Police seized phones, Nazi symbols, and what appeared to a BB gun as evidence during a search of their houses.
Photos of the victim were posted on social media, revealing the identity of the victim, who is an active participant of the anti-government protests. The suspects also wrote that the disagreement was due to the victim reportedly saying that ‘he doesn’t like Nazis’.
On 8 July the Prosecutor General’s Office released a statement about the case, writing that the detainees forced the victim by using guns and knives to kneel and to apologise to the ‘so-called leader of their [Nazi] group’. The video of the apology was uploaded on social media.
According to the Interior Ministry, one of the detainees was convicted in the past. All of the detainees face up to ten years in jail. The Tbilisi City Court has remanded all of the suspects into pre-trial detention.
The neo-Nazi group involved in this case is reportedly known as Bergmann, and is led by an individual named Levan Abesadze. The group was active about 9 years ago and got attention by attacking foreigners in Tbilisi. The most famous case involving the group was an attack on a vegan restaurant named Kiwi in Tbilisi in 2016. At the time, Kiwi said the attack had homophobic and nationalistic motives since it frequently had tourist guests.
Bergmann has not been publicly active in recent years.
