Public Defender issues statement on Ia Kerzaia’s case
By Nika Gamtsemlidze
Monday, December 2
The Public Defender’s office issued a special statement regarding the case of Ia Kerzaia, the late principal of Zugdidi Public School N6. As Ombudsman writes, the same systematic gaps were found in the case, which was characteristic of many other cases investigated by the Prosecutor's Office.
Public Defender suggests that even if the Prosecutor's Office interviewed all persons linked to the case after the launch of the investigation, it was not possible to obtain crucial evidence or establish the truth in the case due to the delayed launch of the investigation.
Although the investigation was launched under the article pertaining to abuse of power (Criminal Code, 332), the Public Defender was guided in the course of examining the case materials by the standards of the effective investigation established by the European Court of Human Rights in relation to the positive aspect of the right to life.
As they write, on November 9, Lavrenti Kiria, filed a complaint against the principal, on the basis of which, Zugdidi public school No 6 was inspected on 9-15 November 2018 and the then Minister of Education Mikheil Batiashvili recommended the school to dismiss Ia Kerzaia. The recommendation was rejected by the school's supervisory board, as they considered that it was possible to eliminate the detected violations in a short period.
It should be noted that according to Rustavi 2, water was not supplied to the region on the day of the inspection and the hygiene of the toilets was not maintained.
Even though Kerzaia’s son, Bachana Shengelia appealed to the Prosecutor's Office to launch an investigation on December 19, 2018, it only started on February 11, 2019. Public Defender says that the delay is not justified.
“Given that the investigation was launched into the case under Article 332, it is absolutely unclear why the investigation was not launched on November 26-27, when Ia Karzaia's public statement had already provided grounds for it,” reads the statement.
Public Defender suggests that the late investigation made it impossible to establish the truth. The video recording relating to Lavrenti Kiria was requested by the Prosecutor's Office from the Ministry of Education only on March 7. The video had already been deleted by that time since the Ministry keeps video recordings only for 29 days. The video footage would have been available in case of a timely launch of the investigation on November 26-27.
“Consequently, the unjustified delay became the main reason for the unsuccessful investigation. The Prosecutor's Office failed to find out who was behind Lavrenti Kiria’s pseudonym or whether the inspection was part of the pre-devised scheme. It should also be emphasized that even after the investigation was launched on February 11, the video footage was requested only on March 7,” reads the statement.
The Office of the Prosecutor General of Georgia does not agree with the Public Defender's statement.
The investigating authority considers that assessments of the legal response to a particular criminal case are biased towards the facts and in some cases go beyond the competence of the Public Defender as it is not a supervisory body for investigative cases conducted by the prosecutor's office.
Moreover, as the Prosecutor's Office points out, the Public Defender's statement does not contain any specific case in which the action of the Prosecutor's Office violated the right of any person involved in the process.
As for the delay, the Prosecutor’s Office says that what the Public Defender says is ‘absolutely confusing.’
“When Bachana Shengelia demanded that the investigation be launched (December 19, 2019), the surveillance camera records were no longer kept, so the investigation was objectively deprived of the opportunity to obtain this evidence," the Prosecutor’s Office said.
Ia Kerzaia died as a result of a stroke on December 9. Earlier, Kerzaia talked with Rustavi 2 and said that after declining the offer to help Zourabichvili win the elections, two staff members of the General Inspection arrived at the school on an anonymous letter for a special inspection.
