TBILISI, DFWatch–The Interior Ministry in Georgia changed its mind about publishing videos showing torture of prisoners, but said nine persons have been detained regarding the discovery of the weapons cache where the videos were found.
Minister of Internal Affairs Irakli Gharibashvili said after meeting with diplomats on Wednesday that nine persons were detained Tuesday night.
Among them is a person identified as the one shown in the videos raping people. One of the detainees is a current employee of the Defense Ministry, while two are former policemen.
Gharibashvili noted that he showed the footage to diplomats and this way responded to the accusations by the opposition, as the footage contains mistreatment and torture of people, but due to the content, the videos will not be published, he said.
About 50 diplomats attended the meeting, including the EU representative, ambassadors from Latvia, Netherlands and Italy, and representatives of the EU’s monitoring mission. The US ambassador did not attend the meeting.
“We discovered a cache and removed arms for two platoons. Eight barrels were full of weapons and drugs. We also found a list of people to be arrested and several video tapes which show terrible scenes, especially two of them, where there is torture, rape and humiliation of people,” Gharibashvili said.
He said the weapons which they found did not belong to the Interior Ministry or the Defense Ministry, as they were unregistered.
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