On 4 June 2014, Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Gharibashvili, made a statement during his meeting with the media:  “There have been no cases of human rights violations in the pre-detention centres. Foreign experts visited Georgia for a second time, studied the situation and saw that we have made big progress in this field.”

FactCheck

took interest in the Prime Minister’s statement and verified its accuracy.

According to Directive No. 108 of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia, pre-detention centres are structural subdivisions of the Human Rights Protection and Monitoring Main Division of the Administrative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The main function of the centres is the placement of people arrested by the Ministry for the involvement in a crime in accordance with administrative procedures of the law. According to the internal regulations of the pre-detention centres, the use of force against a prisoner of the centre is authorised only if he/she physically resists the employees of the centre, takes other forceful actions while being in the centre or during escort or attempts to escape or harm either him/herself or the people around.

The personnel of the centre are allowed to use handcuffs or physically restrain the prisoners until appeasement which should not exceed two hours and should not give the prisoners a possibility to harm themselves. Besides the handcuffs, according to the Law on Police, physical restraint or fighting techniques can also be used in these cases. In each case of using handcuffs, physical restraint or fighting techniques, a person in charge of the centre at that time files a protocol describing the time, place and reason for the use of a particular action.

The statement of the Prime Minister of Georgia, Irakli Gharibashvili, concerned the situation in the pre- detention centres.

Several human rights reports by different experts and organisations were published after the Parliamentary elections of 2012.

On 31 July 2013, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) published its report (FactCheck also examined

this report earlier). The committee visited Georgia in November 2012. During the visit they studied the situation in Number 8 Gldani and Number 2 Kutaisi prisons. However, the Committee’s report does not include the pre-detention centres since the delegation did not visit them.

On 22 September 2013, Thomas Hammarberg, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, published his report.

Hammarberg’s report also did not examine the situation in the pre-detention centres. The Human Rights Commissioner merely talked about a special responsibility of the new government to not allow any kind of torture in the prisons.

After Hammarberg, the US Department of State also published its report.

The report was based upon the research conducted by Georgian and foreign experts as well as non-governmental organisations. According to the report, Georgian non-governmental organisations underlined the improvement of the situation in Georgian prisons. However, cases of disrespectful behaviour and beatings by the police were still reported.

As we can see, none of the reports published after the Parliamentary elections of 2012 mention the situation in the pre-detention facilities. The Prime Minister talked about foreign experts visiting Georgia. In May 2013 British human rights expert, James Murdoch, visited Georgia. He visited several pre-detention centres. As the Ministry of Internal Affairs stated during the visit, after examining the situation in detail, Murdoch would elaborate recommendations and work on a training programme for the employees of the Human Rights Protection and Monitoring Main Division. Murdoch did not comment about the situation in the pre-detention facilities during his visit.

The 2013 report of the Public Defender of Georgia points out that 7,095 of 16,533 people placed in the pre-detention centre sustained injury and 359 of them said that they were injured during or after their arrest. Only 111 people blamed the police for their injuries. However, the report underscored that such injuries could have been inflicted during the procedure of arrest. The report positively assessed the fact that none of the detained people had complained about disrespectful treatment from the pre-detention facility personnel.

Conclusion Three human rights reports were published after the Parliamentary elections of 2012. The reports of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) and Thomas Hammarberg had nothing to say about the pre-detention facilities. It was only the US State Department Report that pointed out cases of the disrespectful behaviour of the police during arrests. In May 2013 British human rights expert, James Murdoch, visited Georgia and examined several pre-detention facilities. FactCheck

presumes that in personal conversation with the Ministry of Internal Affairs officials he could have expressed his satisfaction with the situation in the pre-detention centres; however he made no public statements of this sort.

Despite the fact that we could not find a direct statement by foreign experts about the big progress made in Georgian pre-detention facilities, the report of the Public Defender of Georgia allows us to say that the situation in this field has indeed improved significantly and the personnel of the centres treat the prisoners according to appropriate regulations. However, it should be noted that there are some doubts about disrespectful treatment by the police during the procedures of arrest.

We conclude that Irakli Gharibashvili’s statement:  “There have been no cases of human rights violations in the pre-detention centres. Foreign experts visited Georgia for a second time, studied the situation and saw that we have made big progress in this field,” is MOSTLY TRUE.