Government success in stamping out torture

Torture is now a rarity in Georgia, said the country’s human rights ombudsman last week as he marked an international day against torture.

Ombudsman Sozar Subari says his top priority is stamping out torture—and his single most effective tool has been going to the scene of the crime.

Since taking office in 2004, the ombudsman and his staff have made thousands of trips to police stations and jails.

“As a result, beatings quickly stopped in police stations. Incidents of torture—like hanging a person by their hands or legs for hours, using electroshock and other tools, which were once typical methods of torture—have become rare now,” Subari said at a June 26 press conference convened as part of an international day to recognize and combat torture.

The ombudsman said there have also been efforts to improve laws; to discuss complaints publicly; and to raise public awareness with help from NGOs.

The law now takes torture seriously. The penalty for torturing was once five years in jail; this year, it became 15.

“It is really a step forward,” Subari said.

Along with treatment of prisoners, conditions at jails have also improved. Inmates were once left to sleep on bare floors, according to Subari. When it rained, prisoners would stand up to their knees in water in pre-trial detention cells, where they could wait a month for their day in court.

And in Adjara, agreed Geno Geladze, of the local NGO Democratic Institute, life is far more humane than during the rule of local strongman Aslan Abashidze.

“Abashidze’s period was a time when ill-treatment was done not secretly, but absolutely openly. I would single out that period as one of particular cruelty,” he said.

But while the situation has changed for the better, Geladze said, “it is still not an oasis of democracy.”

The ombudsman said intimidation of victims remains a problem.

“When we find out about a torture case and let the responsible bodies know about it, instead of beginning an investigation, they start a ‘conversation’ with the [victim],” Subari said.

“As a result the people who were tortured say they weren’t tortured, that they hurt themselves, and so on, so they don’t begin an investigation and close the cases.”

Subari cited the example of Aleksi Makhutovi, who was detained last year on murder charges. He confessed to the crime under pressure, Subari said, even going so far as to name the spot where he buried the body.

The body wasn’t there. Nor was it at the second location he claimed to have buried it. Makhutovi eventually said he disposed of the body in a river; investigators closed the case and Makhutovi was jailed—but after a year the supposed victim turned up alive and well.

The falsely imprisoned Makhutovi, who said his confession was extracted under torture, was released last week.

A Justice Ministry representative acknowledged the work left to do: “One can’t deny the positive results after the government worked to improve the issue. We admit there are still many gaps, but in the time we have had so far, we have done our best.”

The representative said a new plan to stop torture and ill-treatment got underway this month at the order of the president. The ombudsman’s role will be front and center in preventing torture, he said.

Georgia acceded to a bedrock international convention against torture in 1994.