NGO "Kartlosi" Friendship Bridge calls people to help the girl arrested in South Ossetia

The NGO "Kartlosi" Friendship Bridge is concerned that the authorities of South Ossetia are holding for five days in Tskhinvali in custody a girl of 20 named Yana Bestaeva-Kandelaki.

The NGO is addressing Georgian and Ossetian authorities, as well as international and local organizations and Vyacheslav Kovalenko, Russia's Ambassador to Georgia, with a request to help to free the girl.

The NGO has learnt from the letter of Yana's mother - Mziya Kandelaki, a resident of Tskhinvali, that at night on April 16 the girl of 20 was taken away for interrogation by employees of the Committee for State Security of South Ossetia "right away, without presenting the public prosecutor's sanction and without warning her parents." According to the mother, the investigators are hiding the daughter from her.

"I know nothing about the condition of my daughter. Today, absolutely by occasion, I saw her from afar, in one of the rooms of the prosecutor's office. Her appearance and reaction to inspector's questions looked slow and inadequate," said the woman.

The NGO "Kartlosi" Friendship Bridge operates in the Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone aiming to advance the dialogue between the Georgian and Ossetian communities and defence of human rights.

The members of the NGO are confident that the detention of the girl is nothing but "exerting pressure on the father of Yana Bestaeva-Kandelaki - Sarmat Parastaev - for his active work in development of Georgian-Ossetian dialogue and his critical remarks about the regime now existing in Tskhinvali.