De-facto South Ossetian delegation abruptly ends meeting in Ergneti

Representatives of de-facto South Ossetia abruptly ended today’s Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) meeting in Ergneti village, near the occupied Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) region.

The main discussion topic of the meeting should have been the case of Archil Tatunahsvili, a Georgian soldier who died in occupied Tskhinvali (South Ossetia) region as a result of torture back in February.

Caption: Head of EU Monitoring Mission Erik Høeg talking to the lead negotiator from South Ossetia Yegor Kochiyev before the meeting. Photo: EUMM Georgia Facebook page.

The de-facto South Ossetia delegation demanded to remove Archil Tatunahsvili’s case from today’s meeting agenda and protested the decision of Georgia to announce two residents of South Ossetia wanted via Interpol.

We arrived at the meeting, though we learned from media that two of our citizens related to the Tatunashvili case, David Gurtsiyev and Alik Taboyev, had been put forward as wanted to Interpol by the Georgian side. We suggested to remove this issue from the meeting agenda, but were were not heard, so we left the meeting in a sign of protest’’, the head of the de-facto South-Ossetia delegation, Yegor Kochiyev, said.

The State Security Service of Georgia stated that such demands are absolutely unacceptable to the central government of Georgia, as they are against the fundamental principles of the IPRM.

Today would have been the 89th IPRM meeting .

The date of the next meeting is not yet known.