Human rights organizations call on Georgia to put an end to tortures

The international human rights organizations Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Penal Reform International are recommending in their report to the government of Georgia to take urgent measures to stop tortures and cruel treatment in the places of detention and custody.

According to the latest report on Georgia, published by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CPT), in many places of detention the custody conditions remain unacceptable.

In relation to one of such detention facilities - the extremely overcrowded Tbilisi SIZO No. 5 - the CPT made a conclusion that "the custody conditions... are equivalent to inhuman and degrading treatment, and as such are offensive for the civilized community."

The Committee has called on the Georgian authorities, among other things, to devise a long-term solution to the old problem of overcrowded prisons, to provide measures of social rehabilitation and opportunities for the inmates to get engaged in useful activities, and to fight against separate manifestations of cruel treatment of detainees, having guaranteed the observance of fundamental rights of every persons and efficient investigation of applications about abuses.

The report of the Human Rights Watch named "Undue Punishment: Abuses against Prisoners in Georgia"; the text of the report in English is available at http://hrw.org/reports/2006/georgia0906/) describes the cases where fighters of special agencies had apparently applied excessive and illegal force to detainees during their operation on suppressing disorders on March 27. In October 2006, the State Office of Public Prosecutor started the investigation into the circumstances of the death of seven detainees.