shalva_abuladze_in_court

Shalva Abuladze was found guilty of murdering a policeman and attempting to murder four other police officers. (Interpressnews.)

TBILISI, DFWatch–A man in Georgia was Monday sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering a policeman and trying to murder four other police officers.

According to Shalva Khachapuridze, a lawyer representing the murder convict Shalva Abuladze, his client was first charged with murdering several policemen in Borjomi and Tbilisi, but the charges were changed into murder attempts in Borjomi.

The court in Akhaltsikhe, in the south of Georgia, sentenced Abuladze to life imprisonment for murdering the policeman Beka Margishvili and for attempting to murder four other police officers.

The lawyer believes that his client was deprived of the right to a fair trial. He told Interpressnews that the court’s ruling was ‘a vendetta’ and his client is innocent. Neither of them attended the hearing today.

“There is no other example of sentencing a person to life imprisonment for murdering one person,” he said.

Shortly after arresting Abuladze it became known that he has served a sentence in the past and was released by the pardon commission in November, 2013, while serving a seven year sentence for attempted murder and illegally owning a gun.

Abuladze was arrested on April 10, 2015 in a special police operation in Borjomi, following a week-long manhunt.

At first, he pleaded guilty, but he later retracted his testimony, denied guilt and said he had been pressured.