12 December 2009, 22:00
Release of Georgian teenagers from South Ossetia postponed
As reported by Georgian MP Giya Tortladze, who visited today the conflict zone, the authorities of South Ossetia refused to release the two Georgian teenagers detained in this zone and postponed the issue till December 14.
According to the South-Ossetian party, five Georgian teenagers were detained by local power agents for frontier infringement and illegal storage and bearing of firearms and explosives. On December 2, the Supreme Court of South Ossetia sentenced two of them to a year of imprisonment in a corrective colony.
Today, parents and friends of the detained teenagers rallied at the Ergneti border check point, waiting for Thomas Hammarberg, Supreme Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe (CE). According to Mr Tortladze, there was an arrangement that today Mr Hammarberg would visit Tskhinvali and take the two teenagers remaining in custody out. However, Hammarberg was today in Tbilisi, as the "Georgia Online" Agency reports.
The "GHN" reports that the promise to release the teenagers ten days later was given on December 2 to Thomas Hammarberg by South-Ossetian officials.
