Next week marks the deadline for the last notice given by Georgian President Mikhail Sahakashvili to the foreign special service s agents. On May 1, they must confess their sins, including spying on Georgia, so that they can start a new life without “going to jail”. Otherwise, they will start their new lives in jail. The Georgian police know the names of the people who have ties with the country’s enemies, their passwords and where they meet. They will catch each and every one and punish them if they don’t show up with a confession.
Sahakashvili made this announcement a month ago when one of his administration workers Simon Kiladze was arrested for doing something other than fulfilling his duty of monitoring the press department.
“The country is full of spies, but we will put an end to that,” threatened the president.
Kiladze’s arrest was shown on all Georgian television networks. During a special briefing, Minister of Internal Affairs of Georgia Vano Merabishvili said that throughout the past two years Kiladze had been involved in collecting and transferring information from the Georgian president, state officials, their visits, and the visits of top deputy foreign officials.
“He has made nearly 20,000 dollars in just two years by transferring information via e-mail and regular mail,” said Merabishvili. Merabishvili, as well as Sahakashvili, are well aware of the spies lurking around in Georgia.
The arrest of the administration staff member caused a huge scandal. The people were more of the opinion that the Georgian authorities had put on a show in order to reduce the number of people’s complaints and improve the environment. Well-known specialists, former workers of the Georgian special services were confused. Former Minister of National Security Avtandil Ioseliani and the current head of the anti-prosecution expressed his doubts about what had happened.
“If Kiladze was really a “groundhog”, why didn’t they try to get him out, as is done around the world? Why wasn’t any country interested in him? Usually, when a spy is found, negotiations start in order to hand him over. I can’t even find the words to describe what’s going on now,” said Ioseliani.
The prosecutors didn’t mention the name of the country, which Kiladze was spying for due to the prosecution’s interests. But there’s no doubt that the press correspondent of the presidential administration was spying for Russia. However, one of the presses said that Kiladze was spying for Ukraine. In any case, there were a lot of doubts about what had happened until the showing of the prosecution on television, when Kiladze confessed that he had been involved in spying. He asked the president to take his confession in account and his cooperation with the prosecution. When he was asked questions about the orders, the volume of his voice went down. But thanks to the specialists at “Imedi” television network, they found out that Kiladze had mentioned Russia as the client-country and not Ukraine. It appears that the story ends here-the spy has been found and has confessed. If the authorities, who are currently busy with the “wine crisis”, haven’t forgotten about their notice, then this spy scandal will most probably go on…if, of course, the spies don’t take advantage of the deadline set by Sahakashvili and don’t get found. There is one more week.
But Ioseliani believes that the same approach is illogical. According to him, it is absurd to give the foreign spy time to surrender or disappear successfully. Perhaps Georgia has chosen which course to take here too. Well, we’ll just see in about a week.