The South Ossetian Foreign Ministry has criticised the detention of 27-year old Tamaz Goloev on espionage charges by Georgia’s State Security Service (SSG). Insisting that the charges are trumped-up, the ministry has called for his release.
The SSG stated on 22 April that a Georgian citizen had been detained on charges of espionage, collecting and passing information on the instructions of foreign intelligence services. The statement did not specify for which country the individual was allegedly spying, but the pro-government TV Rustavi 2 said it was Russia.
The following day, RFE/RL identified the detainee as Goloev (also referred to as Goloti), a resident of Akhalgori (Leningor). According to the publication, Goloev, who has an Ossetian father and a Georgian mother, studied in Tskhinvali (Tskhinval) and frequently traveled to Tbilisi.
Goloev’s mother told RFE/RL that her son had traveled to Tbilisi again on 22 April and was detained the same day, which she learned about from TV. She said she had known nothing about the circumstances of his arrest and, although she was in Tbilisi to see her son, was unable to meet him.
‘I think he is being falsely accused’, Goloev’s mother told RFE/RL, adding that she had not noticed anything suspicious about her son.
The South Ossetian Foreign Ministry called Goloev's detention ‘illegal’, claiming that he was taken under ‘trumped-up pretexts’. The statement noted that Goloev is a ‘South Ossetian citizen’ and was detained in Tbilisi ‘following a provocation by Georgian security services’.
According to the statement, ‘the South Ossetian side used its available capabilities’, including the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) hotline, to determine Goloev’s fate and eventually found out that he was remanded to two-months in pre-trial detention on 24 April.
Calling the detention a ‘completely unjustified action’ with a ‘blatantly political nature’ and a ‘continuation of the policy of terror’ — which, in the ministry’s words, characterised the eras of Georgia’s former presidents Zviad Gamsakhurdia and Mikheil Saakashvili — the statement demanded Goloev’s immediate release.
‘Tasked with photographing defence and security resources’
According to the Georgian investigation, the individual in their custody — who is believed to be Goloev — had been recruited by a foreign intelligence service and, in exchange for payment, was being instructed to gather information ‘against Georgia’s interests’.
The agency outlined two main areas from which the detainee was allegedly instructed to collect information. One of them concerned Georgian law enforcement agencies, including the locations, forces, and resources of the SSG, the Interior Ministry, and the Defence Ministry.
The second area was the strategic infrastructure in Georgia, including bridges, highways, railways, and other key facilities. In both cases, the alleged task also included photographing and video recording the locations.
The SSG further noted that its counterintelligence department has also implicated two other Georgian citizens under the same charges, claiming they were likewise recruited and were ‘collecting various types of information and passing it to representatives of a foreign intelligence service to the detriment of Georgia’s interests’.
According to the statement, the last two are not currently in Georgia and would be placed on international wanted lists. All those accused face eight to 12 years in jail.
In its recent report covering 2025, the SSG stated that the ‘occupying force continued attempts aimed at the harassment of Georgians, cutting off contacts between populations divided by the occupation line, and their Russification’.
The report mentioned the detentions of Georgians Shalva Khizanishvili and Tamar Mearakishvili on charges of espionage for Tbilisi. The former was detained in Abkhazia and the latter in South Ossetia, with Mearakishvili ‘expelled’ to the territory controlled by the Georgian government. The SSG report dismissed the allegations in both cases as made up.
The report further stated that across 2025, 34 cases of illegal detention were identified in South Ossetia or the surrounding area and 40 were recorded in Abkhazia and its surroundings — with the figures apparently including arrests that have been made in territories controlled by the central Georgian government.
OC Media
For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.
