Gvaramia: Man Detained during a Special Operation Planned to Assassinate Gabunia

During a special briefing, the director-general of ‘Mtavari’ TV channel Nika Gvaramia revealed that a 40-year-old man of Ingush ethnicity detained during a special operation on Kavtaradze Street, Tbilisi, on Friday had come to Georgia to assassinate journalist Giorgi Gabunia.

Gvaramia further reported that the man, known by the name Ahmed, is Vasambek Bokovi, a citizen of Russia. He was allegedly going to liquidate Gabunia following the orders of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Head of the Chechen Republic. The director-general of Mtavari Arkhi has said that they have had information about this for weeks.

It was Ukraine’s law-enforcing body that first revealed the information to the Georgian government, according to Gvaramia. The Ukrainian side has been investigating this for a long time, independently from Georgia, since as Gvaramia has reported, they feared that the information would leak from the Georgian government.

Connecting the dots, Gvaramia said that the murder of Gabunia was planned in relation to Gabuania’s monologue back in the summer of 2019 during which Gabunia swore off Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia on national television.

Gvaramia noted that the safety of the Georgian journalist is the responsibility of the Georgian government and urged Georgian and Ukrainian law-enforcing bodies to keep the investigation public as much as possible.

By Nini Dakhundaridze