TBILISI. Nov 12 (Interfax) - The Tbilisi prosecutor's office has detained two former high-ranking Constitutional Security Department officials, Ilya Gamgebeli and David Kokashvili, in a case dealing with the death of businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili.
Gamgebeli and Kokashvili have been charged with abuse of office and illegal detention of an Interior Ministry official, the Georgian Prosecutor General's Office said.
According to the investigation's findings, Gamgebeli and Kokashvili, along with Giorgi Dgebuadze and Levan Kardava, who had been detained before, planned to stage an attack on Patarkatsishvili's home in the seaside community of Ureki in 2006 to intimidate him and prompt him to stop political activities. After the plan failed because of Ureki police station chief Dzhemal Shamatava's refusal to remove security guards from Patarkatsishvili's home, he was unlawfully detained and sentenced to nine years in prison on false charges.
The Tbilisi prosecutor's office decided some time ago to scrutinize the circumstances of Patarkatsishvili's death in London in February 2008 and to launch its own investigation in 2018 on suspicion that the businessman did not die of a heart attack but could have been killed. The investigation said it possessed an audio recording of Dgebuadze's conversation with the former chief of Patarkatsishvili's security service to recruit him, as well as other findings indirectly indicating preparations for Patarkatsishvili's assassination.