Journalistic study raises uneasy questions about Georgian programmer Bachaliashvili's death

Journalists from the "Mtavari Arkhi" TV Company are investigating the death of the Georgian programmer, Tamar Bachaliashvili. The young woman was engaged in drawing funds out of bank accounts of some company, and was killed as an unwanted witness; and traces of the country's authorities are seen in the case, Nika Gvaramiya, Director General of the TV Company, has stated. Mikhail Ramishvili, an advocate, pointed to inconsistencies in the programmer's death case.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Teona Tamazashvili, Tamar's mother, had expressed distrust in investigators' version of suicide as the cause of her daughter's death. She went on a hunger strike, and stopped her protest after the Georgia's Prosecutor General had assured her that the FBI would work on the case. On August 11, 16 Georgian NGOs criticized the "Mtavari Arkhi" journalists for discussing the intimate life of Tamar Bachaliashvili.

The advocate is sure that Tamar Bachaliashvili was killed. He has noted that all the correspondence and calls made before her disappearance were deleted from her phone and computer, which made it impossible to establish who had contacted her; and there was no information about her travels. Besides, the memory card that Bachaliashvili always carried with her disappeared from her confiscated belongings.

"This is a long-planned killing. Initially, law enforcers had a version that she had committed suicide because of depression," Mr Ramishvili has stated.

He has added that recently a new figurant appeared in the Bachaliashvili's case – her classmate Bachan Lobzhanidze's, who called himself her lover. The advocate is sure that the appearance of Lobzhanidze was initiated by law enforcers: by exposing Bachaliashvili as a depressive hysteria in his interviews, he tries to discredit the girl.