Georgia demands inquiry of murder of its citizen by Azerbaijani frontier guards

On Wednesday, April 14, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Georgia made a statement demanding to investigate the murder of a minor shepherd by frontier guards of Azerbaijan. Under the version of the Georgian party, the casualty had crossed the border by occasion, while the Azerbaijani party asserts that the violation of the border was deliberate and was accompanied by threats addressed to frontier guards.

"On April 13, 2010, Azerbaijani frontier guards shot dead a citizen of Georgia Ibragim Gaorgashvili, 17, a resident of Erisimedi village, Signag Municipality, who was searching his cattle and occasionally got on the Azerbaijani side of the Georgian-Azerbaijani border," runs the MFA's statement.

The Georgian party has named the incident "an especially outrageous fact" at the background of traditionally good-neighbourhood relations of the two countries and demanded a full-fledged investigation of the case and punishment of the culprits, the IA "News-Georgia" reports.

In its turn, the press service of the State Frontier Service (SFS) of Azerbaijan stated on that very day that an attempt of crossing the border from the Georgian side was prevented in the Balakan District. The statement of the SFS runs that "the frontier unit detected a group of three infringers who gave no reaction to the command 'Halt!' and a shot in the air and still tried to cross the border, by threatening the frontier guards with cold steel."

Then, the Azerbaijani frontier guards opened fire to defeat, and one of the infringers was wounded, and the rest two disappeared in the territory of Georgia, as the IA "Trend" quotes the statement of the Azerbaijani party.