21 January 2003 00:00
ALEXANDER YAKOVENKO, THE OFFICIAL SPOKESMAN OF RUSSIA'S MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, ANSWERS A RUSSIAN MEDIA QUESTION REGARDING THE GEORGIAN AUTHORITIES' DECISION TO REFUSE TO EXTRADITE TO RUSSIA A NATIVE OF CHECHNYA, ABULKHAMIM ALIYEV
Question: How has Moscow received the decision of the Appeals Chamber of the Supreme Court of Georgia not to extradite to Russia Abulkhamim Aliyev, a native of Chechnya, accused of committing a criminal offense on Russian territory?
Answer: In May 2002 in the town of Poti Georgian police arrested, on his attempt to leave for Sochi, a native of Chechnya, Abulkhamim Aliyev, put on a wanted list by Russian law enforcement bodies on a charge of a deliberate infliction of grave bodily injury under aggravating circumstances on the territory of the Arkhangelsk region.
On August 1, 2002, the Prosecutor General's Office of Georgia took a decision to grant the Russian side's request for the extradition of Aliyev to Russia. But Aliyev's lawyers deemed that decision unlawful and contested it in court. On January 17 the Appeals Chamber of the Supreme Court of Georgia reversed the judgment of a district court on Aliyev, and passed a decision to release him from detention.
Russia and Georgia are parties to the Convention on Legal Assistance and Legal Relations in Civil, Family and Criminal Matters, signed within the CIS framework on January 22, 1993. In this context it arouses bewilderment the position taken by Georgian judicial authorities actually shirking their obligations assumed under the international treaty, although even the Prosecutor General's Office of Georgia confirms that at issue in this case is a "criminal offense."
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