Tbilisi court arrests person accused of killing schoolboy

Mikhail Kalandiya, accused of killing a schoolboy in Tbilisi, has been placed in custody. His advocate claims that the prosecution has failed to gather sufficient evidence.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that investigators had charged Mikhail Kalandiya with the murder of a schoolboy in Tbilisi after the new evidence had appeared of his involvement in the crime. Kalandiya refuses to plead guilty, his advocate asserts.

The session of the Tbilisi City Court to decide on the Kalandiya's freedom restriction measure was held behind closed doors, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports.

At the session, Anna Kotetishvili, a Kalandiya's advocate, stated that her client refused to plead guilty, and there was no direct evidence of his complicity in the murder. She said that there are new testimonies in the case files, but there is no "new proofs" and no new witnesses had been questioned under the case.

The Kalandiya's family has told that Mikhail had been detained in the first days after the murder, and pressure was put on him, under which he had changed his testimonies. Moreover, they demanded to sign ready-made testimony texts from Mikhail's father and brother; and beatings and threats of detaining women from their family were among the methods of pressure, relatives assert.

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on June 6, 2019 at 10:03 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.