Georgia ex-Minister faces torture charges
Georgia's former defense and interior minister Bacho Akhalaya has been charged with false imprisonment and torture, Chief Prosecutor Archil Kbilashvili said on Tuesday ,RIA Novosti reported.
The prosecution alleged that in February 2010, on Akhalaya's orders, 19 servicemen were locked up in a bathhouse for "indiscipline," where they spent three nights without food or heating.
Akhalaya was detained last Wednesday along with another two military officials over charges of abuse of office, degrading treatment, physical and verbal abuse of subordinates, false imprisonment and torture.
On Friday a Tbilisi city court ordered that Akhalaya be taken into custody pending trial.
Akhalaya was dismissed as interior minister in late September as protests in Tbilisi over claims that inmates at a correctional facility in Tbilisi, Gldani Prison Number 8, were tortured, entered their third day. The protesters, religious leaders and politicians, all called for Akhalaya's resignation.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili vowed to punish all those responsible for torture.
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