Zhvania, Zurab Vissarionovich

Zurab Zhvania was born on December 9, 1963 in Tbilisi in a family of physicists. The mother of Ram Antonov is of mixed Armenian ^[3] - Jewish ^{[4] [5]} origin.

In 1985, he received a diploma from the Faculty of Biology of Tbilisi State University , after which until 1992 he worked at the Department of Human and Animal Physiology of the same faculty.

In 1989, he created the Green movement in Georgia, and then the Green Party, becoming its first chairman. For two years he was co-chair of the Green Europe Party.

In 1993, he took the post of General Secretary of the coalition party, created to support the policy of Eduard Shevardnadze , the Union of Georgian Citizens (UHG). On November 25, 1995, after the victory of the SGH in the elections, he was elected chairman of the Georgian parliament . Four years later, he was re-elected to this post, but on November 1, 2001, he resigned, motivating his decision with a protest against the policy of Eduard Shevardnadze.

In June 2002, Zhvania officially announced his withdrawal from the Party of the SGG, as well as from the parliamentary faction of the same name. June 6, 2002 created and headed the parliamentary faction "Democrats". Since June 17, 2002 - Chairman of the political organization United Democrats.

In the parliamentary elections of 2003, he participated as one of the leaders of the Burjanadze-Democrats election bloc. After the so-called “ Rose Revolution ”, as a result of which Mikhail Saakashvili became President of Georgia, Zhvania was appointed Minister of State of Georgia.

On February 17, 2004, the Georgian parliament approved Zhvania as prime minister of the republic.

Doom

On February 3, 2005, Zurab Zhvania arrived in an apartment on Saburtalinskaya Street ^[6] in Tbilisi to meet with his friend, the Deputy Plenipotentiary of the President of Georgia in the Kvemo-Kartli region, Raul Yusupov . After the arrival of Yusupov, he released the guards, saying that she should come a few hours later. At 3 a.m., when the guards were unable to reach Zhvania, they broke the bars on the window and entered the apartment. In it they found the corpses of Zhvania and Yusupov. There was a distinct smell in the room from the gas heater in use .

On February 5 and 6, 2005, Georgia was declared the official days of mourning for the country's prime minister. On February 6, Zurab Zhvania was buried in the Didubian pantheon in Tbilisi. Delegations from 17 countries, as well as various international organizations, arrived in Georgia to participate in his funeral. ^[7]

In Georgia, there is an official version of the death of Zurab Zhvania, according to which he and Raul Yusupov died of carbon monoxide poisoning. There are also a number of unofficial versions, according to which the death of Zhvania and his friend was violent: they were both killed with firearms. The official version has a number of inconsistencies and contradictions. Versions of the murder do not yet have clear and documented evidence.

Official Version

According to the official version of the Georgian side, published on February 4, 2005, Zhvania and Yusupov died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning due to the use of a faulty gas heater - the Iranian Nikala brand gas heating stove. Georgian Minister of Police and Public Security Vano Merabishvili emphasized that there was a gas leak from the gas heater installed in the apartment, unequivocally stating the following: “this is an accident. I personally was in place. ” According to official statements by Georgian investigators, Raul Yusupov rented a three-room apartment on Saburtalinskaya Street a month before his death, and three days before the tragedy he changed the gas stove, which caused an accident ^[10] .

The official version of the death of Zhvania and Yusupov was almost immediately called into question. The landlord on Saburtalinskaya Street claimed that the gas stove was installed not three days ago, as authorities announced, but three months ago and everything worked properly ^[10] . Raul Yusupov’s father, Yashir Yusupov, said he did not believe the statements of the investigation, since his son never lived in an apartment on Saburtalinskaya Street, where the tragedy occurred, and never took it off. Raul Yusupov, according to his father, had an apartment in the Varketilsky district of Tbilisi, where for the past five years he lived with his wife ^[11] .

According to the information of the brother of Prime Minister Georgy Zhvania, fingerprints of the dead were not found in the apartment on Saburtalinskaya Street, where Zhvania and Yusupov's bodies were found. In addition, according to Georgy Zhvania, cigarette butts found in the apartment could hardly have belonged to his brother, as he “had a specific way of smoking cigarettes - he didn’t finish them and quenched them characteristically” ^[12] .

Independent Georgian forensic forensics expert Maya Nikoleishvili also questioned official data on the cause of the death of Prime Minister Zhvania, stressing in an interview with Mze television that “the decision of the authorities to prevent independent experts from being investigated is completely incomprehensible, from which it can be concluded that the authorities have something to hide ” ^[10] .

Soon after the death of Zurab Zhvania, two more tragedies occurred, which, according to the official version of the Georgian side, had nothing to do with the death of the Prime Minister of Georgia. On February 4, 2005, Georgy Khelashvili, an employee of the Zurab Zhvania’s apparatus, was found dead. According to the official version, he committed suicide in his own apartment with the help of a hunting rifle taken from a neighbor ^[13] . Somewhat later, the head of the forensic examination bureau of Georgia Kistauri was shot dead, preparing an opinion on the death of Zhvania and Yusupov. According to the official version, he was killed by his former classmate, who later also committed suicide ^[14] .

On August 14, 2015, a jury trial with 10 votes to 2 found the shift guard Zhvania Mikhail Dzadzamiya and security guard Kobu Kharshiladze guilty of negligence that resulted in the death of the prime minister. Kharshiladze was sentenced to 1 year and 9 months in prison, Dzadzamia to imprisonment for 11 months and 41 days. Zazamiya was released in the courtroom under an amnesty, as he had already served this term in prison ^[15] .

Unofficial versions

In 2005-2008 The leader of the Labor Party of Georgia, Shalva Natelashvili, made a number of statements about the murder of Zurab Zhvania. According to Natelashvili, Zhvania was killed due to the "sharing of profits from the sale of the Georgian Shipping Company," during which "there was a quarrel that ended in a shooting." Then, gunshot wounds on the prime minister’s body were “smeared with molten paraffin” to avoid external signs of violent death. Natelashvili also mentions that Zurab Zhvania was killed in the presence of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (“they say that Saakashvili was in the same building when Zhvania was shot”) ^{[16] [17] [18] [19]} .

In March 2006, former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, in an interview with The Washington Post, said he did not believe in official reports of the death of Zurab Zhvania. “He was killed,” Shevardnadze emphasized, but added that he did not know who ^{[20] [21]} .

On May 17, 2006, the Georgian weekly newspaper The Georgian Times published an article by Fridon Dochia, “Versions That Are Being Sayed About Today.” A high-ranking official of the current government killed Zurab Zhvania in the State Chancellery with a shot in the back, according to which, the Georgian prime minister was killed with firearms by people from the circle of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili :

“... a few days before the death of Zhvania, members of the government from the Saakashvili team demanded from the prime minister a certain share of the funds received from the auctions of Poti port and the airport. <...> According to one version, the warring parties gathered in a suburban town of Shavnabad. And when it became clear that Zhvania did not intend to compromise, tension reached a peak, and one of the very, very high government ranks first shot him in the back and then fired a control shot. However, another version is circulating. It was as if the disassembly between Zhvania and the Saakashvili team did not take place in Shavnabad, but directly in the State Chancellery, and it was there that one of the senior officials fired a bullet in Zhvania’s back and then fired a control shot ” ^[22] .

On September 25, 2007, the ex-Minister of Defense of Georgia, Irakli Okruashvili, stated that Zurab Zhvania had already been taken to an apartment on Saburtalinskaya Street in Tbilisi, where his body was later discovered. Okruashvili said the following: “I can’t say that Zurab Zhvania was killed, I don’t have such information, but I have one information that his body was brought to the apartment, where, it is alleged, he was poisoned with carbon monoxide from another place” ^{[ 23]} .

On September 3, 2008, after the war in South Ossetia , doctors of sciences, Ossetians Soltan Dzarasov and Georgy Tsagolov published an article in which Savanashvili was attributed to the death of Zhvania ^[24] .

In October 2012, Georgy Zhvania, a member of the parliament from the Georgian Dream bloc who had just won the 2012 election , accused Interior Minister I. Merabishvili, Prosecutor General Z. Adeishvili, and Deputy Parliament Speaker G. Baramidze of staging the circumstances of the death of the Prime Minister, who acted under the leadership of Saakashvili. At the same time, the brother of the deceased did not bring charges against these persons ^{[1] [2]} .

On October 2, 2012, the leader of the opposition bloc who won the election to the Georgian parliament, Bidzina Ivanishvili, announced the need to resume the investigation into the death of Zurab Zhvania. At the same time, Ivanishvili called the death of Zhvania a murder ^{[24] [25] [26]} .