Zurab Japaridze

Zurab Japaridze. (Interpressnews.)

TBILISI, DFWatch–Members of Mikheil Saakashvili’s party deliberately disrupted Friday’s parliamentary session because of a former official’s suicide attempt the day before.

The former special unit’s representative who attempted to commit suicide is detained and charged in a high-profile case against members of the National Movement government.

Kakha Nakani is among eleven special unit members who were detained in February in a case about a special operation on May 2, 2006 during which Zurab Vazagashvili and Alexandre Khubulov were killed.

In the operation, the two victims were supposed to be arrested, but ended up being killed in a rain of bullets in the center of Tbilisi, near a former tennis court, thus the name “Court Tragedy” (“kortebis tragedia”).

The former government denied guilt and the case was brought before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

As for the “Court Tragedy”, the eleven special unit representatives were detained after Yuri Vazagasvhili, father of Zurab, died of an explosion on his son’s grave in the beginning of February this year.

A policeman, Gia Sosanashvili, is detained for having caused the explosion on the grave, but he denies guilt. So do the eleven detainees charged with the murder of Yuri’s son Zurab.

One of them, Kakha Nakani, who used to be head of Tbilisi’s Special Unit, on Thursday attempted to commit suicide, because he is not located in the same jail where all the former officials, including policemen, special units or others are located.

According to his lawyer Zaza Chaia, Nakani tried to cut his veins in the cell. He is currently in hospital.

Members of the National Movement claim that all the detainees in this case are political prisoners.

As a sign of protest they didn’t show up for Friday’s session in parliament, which therefore failed to reach the valid minimum number of votes, a so-called quorum.

The party’s representative Zurab Japaridze said before the session that this is a political decision related to Kakha Nakani, who is in ‘illegal detention.’

Japaridze told DF Watch that he planned to make a statement during the session; however when he started his speech and mentioned former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, his microphone was cut off.