In The Hague, rights defenders to complain about non-investigated crimes in Georgia during the August 2008 conflict

Today in The Hague, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC) will publish a report on Georgia entitled "Unable or Unwilling?" In the opinion of the NHC, for various reasons the Georgian authorities are "braking" efficient inquiry of the crimes that fall into jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The report of 30 pages is based on evidences of 244 applicants to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) with complaints against Russia - key witnesses of the crimes committed during and after the armed conflict between Georgia and Russia in August 2008.

The research report made by human rights organizations of Georgia ("Article 42", "Association of Young Lawyers of Georgia" and "Centre for Human Rights") jointly with the NHC will be presented to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the ICC, which monitoring internal inquiries of the crimes committed by the members of the armed conflict in August 2008.

The OTP believes that these crimes fall under the jurisdiction of the ICC, which gives the Court the right to begin its own inquiry, should its prosecutors define that the parties "are unable or unwilling to investigate."

Aage Borchgrevink, a member of the NHC, says that even a superficial look at the crimes allegedly committed by the Russian and South-Ossetian parties against civilian population in Georgia allows seeing "no great progress in investigation."

"The review presented in our report indicates that only one of every four key witnesses was questioned by Georgian investigators. Since September 2008, there was in fact no progress - only 3 percent of the people we talked to had been notified about any further investigatory actions," Mr Borchgrevink has noted.

According to his story, the main emphasis in the report to be presented today in The Hague was made on the reluctance of Georgian authorities to conduct efficient inquiries even in those cases, where there are no obstacles.

"Without due inquiries, the rule of impunity will continue and the cycle of violence will repeat," said the expert. "Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Chechnya - the Caucasus region has seen much violence over the past 20 years, but little justice. The ICC's participation in investigating crimes of the 2008 war will give hope to the truth and justice in the region."

"The main problem of our country is impunity," said Ucha Nanuashvili, Executive Director of the Georgian Centre for Human Rights. "We are interested to have at least one person held accountable for committed crimes, we want to set a precedent. This will help to prevent such incidents in the future."

According to his story, more than two-thirds of the investigatory interviews cited in the report were conducted in August-September 2008, including with hostages from Tskhinvali. "The investigation is slow," said the rights defender. "There are problems with transparency: Georgian authorities would not respond to our requests for information about the state of the general investigation."

According to Mr Nanuashvili, Georgia, like Russia, is reluctant to investigate these crimes, because violations of the law were committed by both parties. "We want to attract the world's attention to the fact, in order to have justice at least once to prevail in our region," he said.

In his opinion, the meeting to be held on May 23 in The Hague will start a whole campaign, the ultimate goal of which is the decision of the ICC in The Hague to launch investigation of the crimes committed during and after the armed conflict in August 2008.