Security Council Secretary’s question rejected
By Gvantsa Gabekhadze
Tuesday, August 12
Security Council Secretary Irine Imerlishvili says the Prosecutor's Office must answer one question - whether the letter sent to the President was classified as "confidential" or not.
According to Imerlishvili, if the letter was confidential and it was made public, there was a violation of the law.
"The Chief Prosecutor's Office must answer one question – was the letter, which it sent to the President that was later made public by the agency, classified as “confidential" or not? Generally, all citizens, and especially the state agencies are obliged to observe the laws. Accordingly, if the letter was confidential and it was made public, then we can say that the law was violated. This question needs to be answered," said Imerlishvili.
The Prosecutor's Office has refused to respond to Imerlishvili’s question.
"We are not making comments on this topic. We have made a statement that the Prosecutor's Office had not publicized any document that contained secrets," the Prosecutor's Office said.
The Special State Protection Service’s case was declassified by Georgian President Giorgi Margvelashvili on August 8. Prior to this, the Prosecutor’s Office sent two letters to the president to end the ban on the documents in order to use them as evidence against the ex-President Mikheil Saakashvili. The documents were assessed as non-confidential by the appropriate bodies and only a certain section of such documents required the President’s admission for making them public.
The President’s administration claimed that the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia published secret correspondence between the Prosecutor General's Office and the President's Administration, which is a violation of the country's law on state secrets and addressed the Minister of Interior Affairs to react on the issue.
However, the ministry stated that the Prosecutor’s Office had not violated the law and not published any confidential information.
NGOs point to the lack of communication between the President’s administration and the Prosecutor’s Office that make situations complicated.
