Six Former Prison Employees Detained for Ill-treatment of Inmates

Six former employees of Tbilisi N8 penitentiary institution have been detained for torture and inhuman treatment of prisoners in 2011-2012.

The information was released by the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia (POG), which said that Malkhaz Ghviniashvili, Nugzar Marghia, Zaza Kharaishvili, Vakhtang Gugutsidze, Davit Chikhladze and Davit Nozadze have been arrested for the torture of prisoners, and that legal proceedings have been filed against them. Former Head of the Legal Regimen of the same facility, Oleg Patsatsia, is also currently under arrest.

“While working at N8 Penitentiary, there were cases of degrading prisoners and exposing them to inhuman and humiliating conditions with the aim to intimidate them and gain their unconditional obedience,” the POG stated.

The prosecution also stated that the defendants deprived the inmates of their rights to correspondence, phone calls and walks were; they were deprived of their right to receive medical care, and their sleeping and leisure hours were deliberately limited. 

“The defendants would often take prisoners out of their cells arbitrarily and moved them to the bath situated in the building of the facility, where they would physically abuse them using bludgeons and other objects. Also, to cause moral anguish, inmates were placed in the penitentiary morgue with deceased persons and locked and left there for periods,” the statement reads.

The POG says that around 600 convicts, all inmates of N8 prison at different times, were questioned. The majority were victims of violence.

The investigation is underway under Article 144 of the Criminal Code of Georgia, which allows imprisonment from four to six years.

Thea Morrison