State Security Service: “Work underway to free Georgian prisoner from Abkhazian prison”

The de-facto leadership of Georgia’s breakaway Abkhazia region has denied that  a Georgian prisoner has disappeared from an Abkhazian prison facility, announced Georgia’s State Security Service. 

The agency said that the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in Georgia was informed about the alleged disappearance of the prisoner, following which the EUMM facilitated the exchange of information on the prisoner. While speaking to the EUMM, the de-facto Abkhaz authorities denied that the prisoner had been removed from the prison facility. 

Giorgi Lukava, a Georgian citizen, has been held in Dranda Prison in the occupied region of Abkhazia. He has been convicted of, as his wife puts it, "being a fighter" and sentenced to life imprisonment. 

Lukava’s family members said on January 28 that Giorgi had called from prison and informed them that prison authorities were planning to transfer him. 

"He phoned us and said that he was being taken away but he didn’t know where they were going to take him”, Lukava’s wife, Lali Lukava, said.

"Since then we are trying to call him but we can’t reach him. We don’t know where he is. We’re afraid they will kill him”, she added.

The family asked Georgian authorities and international organisations to help locate the prisoner.

Ketevan Tsikhelashvili, State Minister of Georgia for Reconciliation and Civic Equality, said last night "together with our international partners, we are working to free Lukava”.