6 years on: Unseen details of August War will be published

A previously unseen detailed analysis of Georgia’s military role in the August 2008 War will soon become publicly available.

Georgia’s Ministry of Defence has recently finished working on the secret document and will publish a portion of the document "in the nearest future”.

Head of the General Staff of Georgia’s Armed Forces General-Major Vakhtang Kapanadze said Ministry authorities had only analysed the war in terms of Georgia’s military actions.

"We have not researched who was guilty. We simply researched how military activities developed,” he said.

Parallel to this, Georgia’s Chief Prosecutor’s Office is continuing to investigate the 2008 Russia-Georgia War.

The Office created an eight-person investigative group which including representatives from the Prosecutor’s Office, Interior and Defence Ministries to find out all details of the conflict.

Georgia, as a member of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, had a responsibility to create this investigative body. In the Rome Statute’s latest report in 2013, it said there was a basis to believe that the South Ossetian troops had committed war-related crimes including torturing, destroying private possessions and looting during the August 2008 conflict.

Meanwhile Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Garibahsvili and Justice Minister Thea Tsulukiani today said The Hague had directly requested Georgia to investigate every detail of the August War and if this did not happen, The Hague prosecutors would do it themselves.

"Our state is obliged to uncover this case,” PM Garibashvili said.

In addition to the Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s investigation, there is an ongoing court case between Georgia and Russia at the Strasbourg-based European Human Rights Court, where Georgia accused Russia of mistreating Georgian citizens during and after the war. In addition, several hundred individual complaints have been sent to the Strasbourg Court by Georgian war victims or their relatives.

Today marked the sixth anniversary of the Russia-Georgia War where Georgia fought to preserve its territory. After five days of conflict, 228 Georgian civilians, 170 soldiers and 14 police officers had lost their lives.

The war displaced 192,000 people in Georgia. Many were able to return to their homes after the war but as of May 2014, more than 20,200 people remain displaced.