Council of Europe independent experts Bruce Pegg and Nicolas Sebire arrived in South Ossetia with a two-day visit. In Tskhinval, the experts are meeting representatives of law enforcement bodies of South Ossetia, South Ossetian citizens lately released from Georgian prisons – Lev Tekhov, Pavel Tekhov and Ahmed Kaziev. The experts are also meeting relatives of the abducted and missing citizens of South Ossetia.
It is also planned to see the roads and routes between villages Korkula and Disev, Disev and Khelchua, as well as the roads and routes around Koshka and Meret, where the South Ossetians were abducted from. Representatives of South Ossetian MFA, Office of the Special Representative for Post-Conflict Settlement and RSO KGB Border-guard department will accompany the experts during their site visits.
It is worth reminding that on 27 February 2010, the independent experts had already visited Tskhinval, where they had their meetings with the relatives of the abducted South Ossetians; they also visited the RF Embassy in South Ossetia, Tskhinval Mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Tskhinval prison.
As the CoE Human Rights Commissioner Tomas Hammarberg emphasized during that visit, the international experts engaged in the investigation of the circumstances under which South Ossetian citizens were abducted by Georgian law enforcement bodies will deal only with the missing persons. According to him, there are two separate processes – one is related to the issues of the missing dealt with by the international experts, the other concerns detainees, and this is the issues dealt with by the HR Commissioner.
It was earlier reported that during their meetings, the CoE experts intend to gain details of the abductions of South Ossetian citizens, and to receive additional information about their whereabouts from the relatives.
