Sanakoev: prisoners exchange talks of South Ossetia and Georgia deadlocked

As of the end of February, the number of Georgian detainees at the attempt to cross the border of South Ossetia made 12 persons. The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent learnt about this fact, as well as about the procedure of returning the detainees and negotiations with Georgia about exchange of "all for all", from David Sanakoev, Ombudsman of South Ossetia.

Let us note that in the current month violations of the border of South Ossetia by citizens of Georgia have become more frequent.

The border infringers had no documents or IDs on them; some of them confessed that they are citizens of Georgia and crossed the border to visit their relatives in South Ossetia. They were allowed to meet them, and after respective procedure of registration by the frontier service of the Russian FSB in South Ossetia the detainees were returned to the territory of Georgia.

Mr Sanakoev has noted that in similar situations their Georgian counterparts put citizens of the Republic of South Ossetia (RSO) into prisons.

He noted that at present the negotiation process "all for all" has deadlocked, as the conflicting parties differently interpret the notion and cannot come to 'single denominator'.

"The South-Ossetian party wants to release not only those illegally kept after the Georgian aggression, but also those who had been in prison back before the August 2008 events. The authorities of Georgia had promised, in the person of Givi Targamadze (Chair of the Committee for Defence and Security, - comment of the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent), to release those detained before the August events; but now they refuse from their promises," Mr Sanakoev said.

He reminded, when speaking about the number of prisoners on both parties, that by the end of February the count of detained citizens of Georgia in South Ossetia was 12, while Georgia kept at least 33, including the disappeared citizens of South Ossetia.