TBILISI. Aug 2 (Interfax-AVN) - Three Russian citizens who introduced themselves as officials of the Interior Ministry were detained by servicemen of the Georgian State Security Ministry in the Pankisi gorge at about 10:00 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Wednesday, Georgian State Security Minister Valery Khaburdzania told a briefing.
According to him, all the detainees produced IDs issued by the Krasnodar interior department. The documents identified the men as Mikhail Tichkov and Yuri Ugryumov, police captains, and Vladimir Blinov, official of the press center.
The detainees claim that they were heading for the Duisi village together with Chechen refugee Makhmud Zurabov to buy a jeep. They also claim that they reached the Pankisi gorge through the territory of the self-proclaimed South Ossetian republic and crossed the Russian-Georgian border being unaware of visa control, the minister said.
Khaburdzania stressed that Georgian law-enforcement bodies had contacted the Russian embassy in Tbilisi, and embassy officials said the IDs could be fake.
The detainees are kept in the Georgian State Security Ministry and the ministry will apply to court for permission to keep them in custody for three month for illegal crossing of the border.
Two of the detainees claim that they are natives of Georgia and that they have close relatives here, Khaburdzania added.