GEORGIA IS UP TO ITS EYES AGAIN

On the evening of 27 September former Defence Minister Irakli Okruashvili was arrested in Tbilisi after making a number of revelations about President Mikheil Saakashvili.

The ex-minister accused the president and his entourage of usurping power and of a deliberate campaign to bring down the state. He said that, "Saakashvili has gone too far and established the rule of immorality, injustice, repression, robbery, dispossession and murder." 

Okruashvili reported that three years ago when he was Georgia's interior minister he had caught Saakashvili's uncle, Temur Aslania, receiving a bribe of 200,000 dollars, but had released him "at the insistence of the president". 

The former minister also claims that the Georgian president had several times tried to order him to eliminate influential people.

The Georgian Prosecutor's Office accused the ex-defence minister of corruption. Georgia's deputy prosecutor, Nika Gvaramia, said, "Instances of the theft of tens of millions of dollars have been discovered in the Defence Ministry." The former minister is also accused of money laundering. "Okruashvili acquired a building to be his party office for 1.8m dollars, but registered the sale as though he had bought it for 250,000," Gvaramia said.

Irakli Okruashvili's own reaction to what is going on has become known. He said that he is not guilty and considers himself a political prisoner. 

Before his arrest the former defence minister managed to meet the US ambassador in Georgia. He also gave an interview before his arrest to the American Internet publication, Eurasia.net in which he repeated that Saakashvili had instructed him to "remove" prominent businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili. Okruashvili confirmed that he had tried to warn the US authorities about Saakashvili's plans for Patarkatsishvili. 

US reaction to Okruashvili's arrest was not long in coming. The same day an assistant to the US secretary of state, Matthew Bryza, said that, "if someone has committed a crime, they should bear responsibility". He said that he did not yet know all the details of Okruashvili's arrest, but "it is important that everything should be in full accordance with the law". In Russia experts agree that the arrest heralds the death throes of the Saakashvili regime.

The leaders of Georgia's opposition parties called on the people to gather outside the parliament building in Tbilisi on 28 September and begin a campaign against Mikheil Saakashvili's regime, which has begun "large-scale political terror against its opponents".