Sukhumi Accuses Tbilisi in Harboring Jailbreakers

(Tbilisi. April 11, 2003. Civil Georgia) – Interior Ministry of unrecognized Abkhaz Republic claims four jailbreakers out of 9, which escaped from Sukhumi prison on April 7, hide in western Georgia.

According to the Abkhaz law enforcers these four jailbreakers from the Chechen warlord Ruslan Gelaev’s detachment were captured during the failed October 2001 incursion into the Kodori gorge.

Abkhaz official news agency Apsnipress reports quoting Interior Ministry officials that the Georgian special forces assisted the jailbreakers to leave Abkhazia and hide in western Georgia.

Earlier Georgian State Security Ministry Valeri Khaburdzania denied that the jailbreakers found save haven on Georgian-controlled territory.