Georgia: Investigators of First President's Death Receive Threats

Anonymous callers instructed a group of Georgian lawmakers not to dig into the murky circumstances surrounding the death of former Georgian president Zviad Gamsakhurdia, members of the Freedom Party told Georgian journalists on November 17. The Freedom Party is headed by the late president's elder son, Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, who also chairs the investigative commission.

Freedom Party spokesperson Mirian Patarkatsishvili said he received a call the day after Tamaz Ninua, minister of security under Gamsakhurdia, and his wife were found shot to death in their Tbilisi apartment on November 13. "Tamaz Ninua was about to share very important information with the parliamentary commission," Patarkatsishvili told Rustavi-2 television on November 17.

Zviad Gamsakhurdia, who presided over Georgia's violent divorce from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, barely spent a year in office as post-Soviet Georgia's first democratically elected president. In 1992, he was forced from office by rebellious generals, who later installed former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze as president.

After several failed attempts to retake power, Gamsakhurdia, who accused both Shevardnadze and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev of plotting against him, was found shot dead in 1993 in a village in western Georgia. His family and supporters heave vehemently disputed the official version of the Gamsakhurdia killed himself.