22:46, 21 October 2004

South Osetian authorities cast doubt on Saakashvili's statement

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili announced yesterday, October 20, that a few days ago, officers of special services conducted an operation to detain saboteurs who had blown up a pier of a high-tension line in the Kaspsky district, bordering on South Osetia. However the reliability of facts given in the statement has been called in question. The point is that Saakashvili did not present any pictures or frames with liquidated saboteurs.

South Osetian sources suppose that if this proof is not presented, recently killed peacekeepers of the South Osetian battalion in the zone of the Georgian-Osetian conflict Ivan Margiyev and Ilya Khachirov and three wounded peacekeepers can be posed as the killed saboteurs. The peacekeepers were attacked soon after the high-tension line explosion. Their car was fired point-blank in the Leninogorsky district. Then officers of the Georgian State Security Ministry took the wounded away to Tbilisi, where they interrogated and tortured them.

Author: Inga Kochiyeva, CK correspondent

Source: Caucasian Knot