De facto authorities of Tskhinvali/South Ossetia condemned the recent arrest of Tamaz Goloev, a resident of the occupied Akhalgori area, on spying charges in Tbilisi, dismissing the move as “unjustified” and carrying “political character” and calling for his release.
The State Security Service of Georgia (SSSG) reported arresting a Georgian citizen and identifying two more over alleged spying for a foreign country on April 22, but didn’t name the suspects or the foreign country. Pro-government media later said the suspects were spying for Russia, while Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty identified the arrested suspect as Tamaz Goloev (Goloti), a 27-year-old resident of Akhalgori, a town in the occupied Tskhinvali region. On April 24, a court in Tbilisi sent Goloev to pretrial custody.
“We regard such completely unjustified actions of the Georgian repressive apparatus, which have an overtly political character, as a gross violation of [Tamaz] Goloev’s rights and a continuation of the terror policies of the eras of [Zviad] Gamsakhurdia and [Mikheil] Saakashvili, and call for his immediate release,” Tskhinvali’s de facto foreign ministry said in an April 25 statement, calling the arrest grounds “fabricated.”
Tskhinvali identified Goloev as a student of Tskhinvali’s “South Ossetian State University,” saying that he crossed to Georgia proper on April 21 for “personal affairs” and was “captured in Tbilisi as a result of provocations by Georgian security services” the next day. It added that Tskhinvali triggered the hotline operated under the Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism, an internationally-facilitated security framework.
The move is “a clear indication that the territory of Georgia, despite the occasional ‘peaceful’ statements voiced by representatives of official Tbilisi, has been and remains dangerous and hostile for South Ossetia and its residents,” the de facto foreign ministry said, adding that it “strongly recommends” Tskhinvali residents to “refrain from traveling to Georgia for security reasons.”
Announcing the arrest on April 22, SSSG said that the suspect had been tasked with gathering information on Georgian law enforcement agencies “regarding the locations of their deployments, forces, and assets, as well as photo and video documentation of their facilities,” as well as with collecting information on the locations of “strategic infrastructure” across Georgia.
Tbilisi’s move to arrest a person on charges of spying, reportedly for Russia, marks a move away from earlier cautious policies by Georgian Dream authorities vis-à-vis Moscow, raising questions in Georgia on true motives.
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