Georgian-Abkhaz officials agree to exhume graves
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The remains of victims of the Abkhazia crisis (1992-1994) are one step closer to being returned to their families in Georgia.
A meeting between Georgian and representatives of the de-facto Government of beakaway Abkhazia met face-to-face and agreed to excavate cemeteries in Georgia and Abkhazia and return victims of the Abkhaz crisis to their hometowns.
But before this can happen, the remains must undergo DNA testing to identify them.
Yesterday it was agreed the Achadara cemetery in Georgia’s breakaway region Abkhazia will soon be excavated. It is believed 44 Georgians are buried there, said Georgia’s Minister of Internally Displaced Persons, Refugees and Accommodation Davit Darakhvelidze.
Remains from Babushera and Sukhumi Fame Park cemeteries have already been excavated.
Analysis of the 25 bodies exhumed from the Sukhumi Fame Park burial ground will be compared to DNA of the victims’ relatives. From this, the remains can be positively identified, Darakhvelidze said.
He added grave sites in Kodori Gorge and Vaziani in Georgia would also be excavated and if any Abkhazian bodies were identified, these remains would be transferred back home.
Darakhvelidze spoke to journalists after his visit to Turkey where he met representatives of the de-facto Government of breakaway Abkhazia face-to-face and discussed ways of bringing the bodies of the remaining conflict victims’ home.
This was the fifth Georgian-Abkhazian meeting and was organised by the International Red Cross, Darakhvelidze said.
He noted the next meeting with the Abkhazian side would be held at expert level and was scheduled for September.
The first meetings between Georgian officials and representatives from the de-facto Government of Abkhazia started in October 2013 and were deemed successful. In May this year, authorities began to excavate graves at Babushera Cemetery following long-time Georgian-Abkhazian negotiations.
On September 20, 1993, during the Abkhaz war, a plane carrying more than 120 people from Tbilisi was shot down while landing at Babushera Airport in Sokhumi. The event happened a few days before Tbilisi lost the battle for Sukhumi on September 27, 1993.
The bodies of 31 Georgians who died in a plane crash in Abkhazia have since returned home, 21 years on from the tragedy.
Georgian officials from the Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from the Occupied Territories, Accommodation and Refugees of Georgia are heading abroad to speed up the process of returning the bodies of the victims of the Abkhazia crisis(1992-1994) back to Georgia.
It's been 21 years since the Babushera tragedy in Abkhazia and the bodies of thirteen Georgians who died in the crash are finally being returned home. A plane carrying more than 120 people from Tbilisi was shot down while landing at Babushera Airport in Sokhumi on September 20, 1993, during the Abkhaz war.
Excavation of Georgian remains found in a mass grave in Abkhazia at Sokhumi’s Babushera Airport in September 1993 has begun, with authorities hoping to identify the remains and return the bodies’ home to Georgia.
The bodies of 31 Georgians who died in a plane crash in Abkhazia have returned home, 21 years on from the tragedy.
Four bodies unearthed at Babushera’s mass grave in Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region have been identified, enabling a Georgian woman who has dressed in black for the past 21 years to finally give her loved ones a proper burial.
Four soldiers who died in a plane crash while on a military mission 21 years ago have been buried with full military honours at the Digomi Brothers’ Cemetery today.
Georgian Ministry of Refugees officials and representatives of the de-facto Abkhazian government met today under the auspices of the International Red Cross Commission where they discussed issues relating to the searching and transferring of bodies of those missing since the Georgia-Abkhazian conflict in the early 1990s.
25 Georgian heroes who lost their lives in the Abkhaz war in 1993 who have been recently identified and transported to the capital of Tbilisi were buried today. Georgia’s Prime Minister thanked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Abkhazian side for their support in finding and identifying the people who died in the war.
The Georgian government has created a commision uniting 10 different state agencies to find the burial sites and identify the bodies of 2,300 individuals who went missing during the armed conflicts in Georgia in the 1990s and in 2008.