TBILISI, July 27 – A Georgian man was released by de facto South Ossetian authorities on Monday.
The 59-year-old was detained the day before near Perevi, in Sachkhere municipality.
The breakaway region’s news agency RES reported that he had ‘inadvertently crossed the border near the village of Sinagur in the Dzau District,’ according to a statement by the press service of the FSB.
Interpressnews reported that Georgia’s State Security Service (SSS) had made use of the European Union’s “hotline”, operated by EUMM, to resolve the situation.
“The State Security Service continues to work continuously to release every citizen of Georgia illegally detained in the occupied territories,” the service said in a statement.
Since the 1990s, the South Ossetia conflict formed a patchwork of territories, but after the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, Russia established the Administrative Boundary Line (ABL) from the Soviet era, with its federal security service, FSB, enforcing the de facto border sharply separating territory controlled by Tbilisi from that controlled by Tskhinvali.
Hundreds of local residents have since been detained near the ABL for inadvertently crossing the line, which runs through partly populated terrain with agricultural lands as well as forested areas.
