TBILISI, September 19 – Three former senior Georgian officials have testified in the criminal trial of exiled former prime minister Giorgi Gakharia over a police checkpoint near the breakaway South Ossetia region.
Prosecutors claimed the testimony confirmed that Gakharia acted without consulting the three.
The hearing took place behind closed doors at Tbilisi City Court on Friday. The case deals with events in 2019, when a Georgian police checkpoint was established near the village of Chorchana, next to the dividing line with South Ossetia. The move blocked a planned Russian-backed border expansion but also prompted retaliatory outposts from separatist forces, leading to a brief spike in tensions.
The witnesses were former prime minister Mamuka Bakhtadze, former defense minister Levan Izoria and former intelligence chief Davit Sujashvili. Bakhtadze testified remotely because he was outside Georgia.
Prosecutor Tamar Iakobidze said all three confirmed that Gakharia had decided on his own to establish the checkpoint without coordinating the move with them. She said the witnesses explained why the decision should have been coordinated with the National Security Council and other security institutions.
Gakharia, who was interior minister when the checkpoint was established, is accused of making the decision unilaterally and causing further Georgian territory to fall under the control of the South Ossetian authorities. Prosecutors allege that the consequences included the loss of access to about 100 hectares of forest and the placement of additional homes in the villages of Kobisa and Tsnelisi under occupation. He faces up to 13 years in prison if convicted.
The prosecution requested that Friday’s hearing be closed because the former officials might disclose state secrets. The defense objected, arguing that their earlier testimony was not classified and its contents were already public. The judge granted the prosecution’s request.
Gakharia’s opposition party, For Georgia, strongly disputes the prosecution’s account. Party MP Tata Khvedeliani said Friday that the Georgian authorities were taking the same position as the South Ossetian authorities, who have demanded the checkpoint’s removal. She accused the government of reversing its earlier support for the checkpoint and argued that the criminal case was being used to strengthen Tskhinvali’s territorial claims.
The party has also challenged the prosecution’s claim that the checkpoint led to additional territorial losses. In August, Gakharia’s lawyer Berdia Sichinava tried to introduce an earlier statement by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze that Russia had made no territorial advances in Georgia since 2012. The court refused to admit the statement as evidence after prosecutors argued that it was a political assessment unrelated to the case.
