Inhuman and Degrading Treatment of Drug Users

A car is stopped by police officer from Special Operative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia (SOD) ordering to get the arrested persons out of the car. On the footage can been seen two arrestees who are turned towards the road and got the kick hind. 


All the above mentioned details are screened by a SOD officer. Short after that the footage is posted on YouTube.com. This is the very officer whose voice is heard from the footage who after kicking tells the arrestees that they are free to go.


Aleqsandre Elisashvili, public activist and a Journalist in Georgia who runs a talk-show “Barieri” at TV Company “Kavkasia” in the Program tells the “Week Reportage” a short story that the deputy Minister and his friend were arrested by SOD officers for illicit drug use. After that Nika Gilauri, who is now the prime Minister made a phone call to the Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili and asked to let the arrestees go because one of them being his childhood friend. Interior Minister himself called the SOD officers and told to give them kick hind and let them go. The SOD officers word by word did as ordered. Aleqsandre Elisashvili got the above mentioned information from employees of the Ministry of Finance.


According to the online newspaper “24 Hours”, former ombudsman and for now a cochairman of political unity “Alliance for Georgia” Sozar Subari at a held conference on 26 January 2010 states that “We deal not with disciplinary misdemeanor but the whole cascade of crimes punishable under the criminal law”. The case is about SOD officers’ committing inhuman and degrading treatment.   

Drug Policy Georgia
www.drugpolicy.dsl.ge