The Democracy Research Institute addresses the Minister of Interanl Affairs with public questions relating to the delay in bringing the organizers of the July 5 violence to justice.

More than a month has passed since the organized group violence of July 5, however, so far no organizer of the violent actions has been held criminally liable, which raises serious questions about the objectivity and impartiality of the investigation.

As of today, the investigation into the July 5 violence is ongoing under the second part of Article 225 (participation in gang violence) as well. The investigation of the case under this article indicates that the violent events of July 5 were pre-organized by specific individuals and were not spontaneous. The public calls made by members of the violent group before the July 5 bloody violence prove that there had been efforts to mobilize the violent group long before July 5, which should have been known to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Nevertheless, to date, none of the organizers of the pre-organized hate-motivated group violence has been prosecuted. Impunity towards  the perpetrators of violent crimes of this magnitude gives them the opportunity to commit new criminal acts and poses critical risks to the security of the State and society. It is also important to note that the investigation of criminal cases against individual leaders of these violent groups is suspiciously delayed. In particular, the investigations into the criminal activities of Levan Vasadze, Sandro Bregadze and Guram Palavandishvili have not yielded any results yet.

It is obvious that both before and after July 5, 2021, these individuals have been involved in organizing a number of gang violence on the grounds of intolerance of the LGBTQ community and their supporters. Accordingly, there is a necessary standard to carry out investigative actions against them under the Criminal Procedure Code and there is a reasonable presumption that these individuals have organized and carried out hate crimes.

Despite all this, the response of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the actions of the mentioned persons is not proportional to their personality, calls or actions containing elements of crime.[1]

In order to dispel the well-founded suspicion in the society that the ruling political elite is cooperating with and covering the leaders of the violent groups responsible for July 5, it is important to investigate the alleged violent actions committed by Guram Palavandishvili, Alt Info team, Levan Vasadze and other associated groups and to prosecute the organizers of violence as soon as possible.

[1] All our members have been transferred to the police - Alt Info, available: https://netgazeti.ge/news/554562/ (last accessed on 29.07.2021)