In accordance with Paragraph C of Article 21 of the Organic Law of Georgia on the Public Defender of Georgia, the Public Defender has addressed the Chief Prosecutor, Murtaz Zodelava, with a recommendation to launch an investigation into the fact of physical assault on Zurab Labakhua by employees of the Senaki Police Station and to ensure that a medical forensic examination is conducted within the shortest possible term, in order to determine the character, degree, and age of the injuries on Zurab Labakhua’s body.

On June 8, 2012, the Public Defender received an application of citizen Nona Labakhua. According to the applicant, her husband, Zurab Labakhua, had been cruelly beaten by employees of the Senaki Police Station while they were detaining him.

On June 11, a representative of the Public Defender met and talked with defendant Zurab Labakhua. According to the prisoner, on June 3, he was walking along Chkondideli Street in Senaki when a stranger dressed in black grabbed him by his neck and started to beat and swear at him, calling other persons at the same time. According to the prisoner, four more persons came up to him; they knocked him down and started to beat him. Then they put handcuffs on him, put him in a car, and took him to the Senaki Police Station. As the defendant points out, the fact of his beating in the street was witnessed by his family members and neighbors. He says that the employees of the police were also beating him and assaulting him verbally in the car, before he was delivered to the police station.

According to Labakhua, when he was in the temporary detention isolator, his health condition deteriorated several times, due to which the police officers called an ambulance four times. And on June 5, he was transferred to the Senaki District Hospital.

In the protocol on temporary detention drawn up in the Senaki Temporary Detention Isolator, it is indicated that at the time of being placed in the isolator, on June 4, Zurab Labakhua bore bruises in the areas of the right eye socket, the left kidney, and both knees, and a bruise and a swelling in the area of the left ankle.

According to the medical certificate drawn up by the Head Physician of Establishment No. 4 of the Department of Prisons on June 6, 2012, Zurab Labakhua bore bruises in the areas of both eye sockets, a scratch and an incision on the left side of the forehead, an incision on the area of the right shoulder, scratches covered with scab near the joints of both hands, and a bruise at the upper edges of both buttocks.

On June 11, when the representative of the Public Defender visited Labakhua, on visual inspection the prisoner still bore different types of injuries: two bumps on the head, excoriations on the temples, yellowish livid spots on the left shoulder and both eye sockets, excoriations and livid spots on both wrists, livid spots on both knees and in the kidney area, bruises and livid spots in the areas of both ankles, a longitudinal scratch on the right elbow, and a livid spot in the area of the right shoulder.