The President of Georgia: About yesterday’s task - have you identified everyone that is in those horrific videos and have you arrested them?

The chief prosecutor: Investigation is ongoing very intensively, Mr. President, 10 public figures have been detained as of now, including several high ranking officials - deputy chairman of the law enforcement department, director of the Gldani N8 prison, his deputies and others.

The President of Georgia: How many people are there in total in this group?

The chief prosecutor: We have already detained 10 people, we continue work and we have moved to the intensive interrogation regime of 12 suspects. We will do our best to conduct the most effective investigation. Certainly, it was a horrific crime and interest of the public is high.  

The President of Georgia: My main question is: where the Prosecutor’s Office had been until now? The fact that such a large group, for so many days, perhaps, even months, I do not know with what motive or without a motive, including complete maniacs had simply acted unpunished; had beaten and humiliated people and were unpunished. Except for maniacal motives, I really do not comprehend what can be the cause of this appalling behavior. The fact that we began an investigation only a few weeks ago means that many layers have failed. Anything is possible, yet is it difficult to imagine for it to happen at such scale, for so long, in any state structure. In effect, there has been a systemic failure. Not only this group…or even the fact that you were saying yesterday that they were tasked by the existing prisoners, what does this tell us? What is the situation like in our prisons? Legal thieves can no longer rule, instead what is happening inside? That is why our response has to be much more than just an arrest of these people. Foremost, we have to entirely revise this system. This is the only partially reformed structure left in the state apparatus. The problem was that we had fundamentally changed all organs - police, tax office, custom service, there have been fundamental changes at the Ministry of Defense in recent years since 2008, and the penitentiary system was the only one, where despite the fact that Minister Kalmakhelidze was changing many things - she had introduced dates, probation, bracelets - it turns out that such things were taking place on the main spot, in the main prison, in the main center. It turned out that all of this was only external, partial changes and the main thing was just as horrendous as in the old times. That is why Prime Minister, the situation is more extensive and it goes beyond the competence of the Prosecutor’s office. This system needs to be fully abolished, the entire penitentiary department, it requires complete reorganization, it needs to be fully established from the beginning - just as you did in the patrol police, just as it was the case with the police. There might be a violation taking place in the police today, and you cannot yourself, nor anyone else, be held responsible for every policeman - it is impossible system-wise, but in any case, what we still did during previous years was that whenever there was a violation by a policeman, we went there, fired him, punished and detained him. That was the reason we managed to control the system. We did not even show it on TV. It seems that there was no such external control at all or it was too weak. That is why Vano, do take this job under your personal supervision. Can you manage to completely switch to this system? I understand well that it is a dirty political war. But I care about politics the least at the moment. What we are seeing today goes beyond any politics. I know very well that lots of money is circulating too, it has also been established that it was staged, but it does not matter now - you should not give a pretext, they should not find your weak point, and the system should not end up in the hands of some maniacs in a way that it is easily manipulated by wicked people from inside, as well as outside. That is why, do switch completely, and let us put aside all other issues for a while, and let’s reform this system, just as we did with the police reform. This is a much smaller system, yet a difficult system - I have worked that and know it, but despite the fact that we have changed many things there, principal awful things still have persisted inside. As we are building a civilized, human centric country and not one based on a disciple of violence, we should have the same kind of zero tolerance towards the violators of human rights which we have towards crime, and those people who serve sentences for murder, rape, robbery and it is the reason why there is no criminality any longer here - it is almost zero. There are lots of mechanisms with which we can establish order, without physically affecting a person, and there are lots of other methods to persuade people. Here, we simply dealt with people, who enjoyed what they did. That is why we should bring in the patrol police officers to prisons, especially to the most problematic prisons. It is a temporary step, until the staff is reselected there, reshuffled, and trained, as was the case during the police reform. Bring in the patrol police groups, even if it is not really their job. We are in an extraordinary situation and it is a temporary measure, until we fundamentally refresh and change everything. Not only does the regime have to be changed, we have to expand the probation system starting from showers, to the sanitary conditions, so that our prisons are less burdened.  

It is very important to establish what exactly had happened. That is why we need to create a parliamentary commission, and involve the public. The ombudsman is not in Tbilisi, just as he arrives I will meet him and we need to designate the representative of an ombudsman to every prison. He should not visit rarely, but should remain in the prison - let us add a staff, money…Giorgi Tugushi has spoken  and criticized this system for all these years. As it turns out, he rightly criticizes it. Let these people always be there, let them allow the monitoring groups all the time. 25 thousand families, who have relatives in prisons, are nervous. Those of us who have no relatives in prisons are mad, and imagine when you have a relative there, no matter for what reason. And because of that, from this very hour, contact everyone and make the list of those who want to have a rendezvous, allow them to go cell-by-cell and show them their relatives, and allow them to see them, so that they are sure that they are safe and sound, and have had no problem. We have to open up the system as much as possible - the closed system leads to what has happened. We have opened up the police, and I repeat once again that there might be some flaws and no one can guarantee that there are not any, but overall, because it is open and because the public is involved and in control, such a thing is excluded there. What do you make of this Vano?

Vano Merabishvili: Mr. President, I am personally responsible for the security of every single prisoner from today on. I say this in front of the whole public, I especially want to tell their families - I take the responsibility from this moment that human rights, civil rights, not only crimes like this but other basic ones, be it social or security related issues will be solved. I will personally take up this job and be engaged in this. You remember that with the aim of getting testimony, there was a tradition of torture in the police years ago, and we have eradicated it once and for all at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the police. I guarantee to you that soon this organ will be just like the one that is appropriate to today’s Georgia, and the public’s trust towards it will rise. Similar facts will never happen and each family member, every citizen of Georgia will have a guarantee and be ensured that their family or any member of our society will never face such a threat. I will personally be engaged, and we will make fundamental structural changes in the upcoming days and we will establish a new system in several months…

The President of Georgia: Let us bring in the patrol police before evening, first, with the aim of humanitarian treatment, while second, enhance measures as we know well what plans were there, what it was related to, and what was its aim in prisons. That is why we have to preclude such occurrences. It is not 1991 today, when the doors were opened, they let people out and people remember well what had happened to the society. We cannot open this door, but it should be transparent, everyone should know what is happening outside and inside and who is responsible for the fate of each person.

Vano Merabishvili: I give you a guarantee that not only the security of imprisoned people will be ensured, but the security of the entire society. We take the responsibility for this and we will not allow the old times to be back. We will make sure that citizens outside, and the prisoners too will be safe and that their rights enshrined in our constitution and the law will be protected. To make sure this is our obligation towards every citizen of Georgia, as well as every prisoner, no matter what sentence is he serving.

The President of Georgia: Society demands answers on many questions and it is absolutely right. We should constantly provide information, including the information which we know about, which partly, for reasons of investigation has not been made public. What has happened is an unimaginable horrific fact. It is a discrediting of everything that we have done throughout all these years, and if there is any betrayal personally to me then it is what these inhuman creatures have been doing. Yet, on the other hand, in parallel to this, Georgia faces many other threats, including the threat from international organized crime. I believe, we have to tell this to the public too, including acquainting them with the information, which you have as a result of the cooperation with relevant foreign structures. The public should know what game is going on, what fever is there, what attempts are there, and will be. We are less afraid of this, but the most disgusting and unexpected for me has been what was happening inside the system. This was a blow to me, otherwise we will deal with the rest of the challenges, and we somehow know what to do.

Now, you have to basically, completely switch to this job - check every single day and night, whether someone has been transferred somewhere unfairly; whether someone has been unfairly sanctioned with disciplinary means; whether there is an abuse of authority somewhere…  

Discharge the risk-groups that are there, and bring in the patrol officers to prisons until the evening. I understand that only one group has been disclosed, but I certainly do not exclude that the same thing is happening elsewhere. If it is possible that such acts were possible here without punishment, either with provocation or not, it could have been the same elsewhere. We cannot risk any place; patrol officers, public defender and monitoring groups should be stationed in all major prisons. Let the relatives go in and show them their family members.

I also want you to pay more attention to healthcare. We have worked hard on this in previous years, we have strengthened this block, but the level of illness is still unacceptably high. It requires a separate attention too and serious money and we have to do it. I know from Sandra - she went there very often. We have a better picture with tuberculosis, but it still is very common, hepatitis is very common too, and we have to address this. This is a separate topic.

You should now immediately address the principal issues. Everything has to be changed. We promised the public yesterday, and these people are already detained, while now I promise you that we will change everything at a pace that we did in previous cases. This system should function in few days in a manner that no one can recognize it.  

Please, proceed.