Suspected culprit of blowing up "Monument of Glory" arrested

In Georgia, the Tbilisi City Court has ruled to put Avtandil Darsavelidze, technical director of the "Sakpetkmretsvi" company, suspected in the case about the explosion of the "Monument of Glory" in Kutaisi, to two-month pre-trial custody.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that as a result of the explosion of the Memorial to WWII Heroes on December 19 in the city of Kutaisi, Western Georgia, Anna Dzhincharadze and her daughter Nana of seven were killed. Three more persons are in hospital in critical condition. According to the prosecutor's office, technical director of the LLC "Sakpetkmretsvi" Avtandil Darsavelidze, detained on December 20, was directly in charge of observing safety during dismantling the monument; and during the explosion the relevant safety regulations were violently broken.

Today, the leading oppositional forces of Georgia have announced their intention to organize a protest action in Kutaisi. Oppositionists believe that along with those who were directly engaged in dismantling, the authorities should be punished, since they failed to give up the idea of dismantling the monument, despite numerous requests and appeals of politicians and the broad public, the IA "News-Georgia" reports.

As reported on December 20 by Shota Burdzhanadze, head of the organization "For Fair Georgia", half an hour before the explosion of the "Memorial of Glory" residents of Kutaisi were informed that it would be a trial and safe explosion.

On December 20, the opposition held a protest action at the building of the Mayoralty of Kutaisi and called the population of the city to go out to the streets on Monday, December 21, and "express their protest against the act of vandalism committed by the authorities, who have ruined the monument to the soldiers, who had perished in the WWII." Oppositionists demand to punish the bosses of the MIA who were responsible for people's safety at the explosion.

Meanwhile, in the context of perished people in Kutaisi, President of Georgia has sacked Mikhail Chogovadze, Governor of the Imereti District.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) of Russia has characterized the destruction in Georgia of the memorial to casualties of WWII as "blasphemy, another shameful act of the present leaders of Georgia in their manic aspiration to erase the historical memory of their own people." Moscow believes that the Georgian authorities committed an act of state vandalism. In its turn, the MFA of Georgia has stated that its Russian counterpart has "a nasty habit of interfering with internal affairs of other states."