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Tsotne GamsahurdiyaSon of the first President of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia.
Country:
 Georgia |
Content:
Biography of Tsotne Gamsakhurdia
Tsotne (Tsotne) Zviadovich Gamsakhurdia is the son of the first President of Georgia, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, from his second marriage to Manana Archvadze-Gamsakhurdia. After his father fled Georgia in 1992, Tsotne lived in Chechnya. In 1997, he was kidnapped by Chechen militants but was later released. He then returned to Georgia and became an assistant to the mayor of Batumi.
On April 11, 1999, in Tbilisi, Tsotne shot and injured his peer, Avtandil Maglakelidze, a player on the Georgian national water polo team, after an argument before fleeing. In October 2005, while attending a gathering with friends, Gamsakhurdia attempted suicide. He stabbed himself in the chest with a knife in the bathroom and was rushed to the intensive care unit. His relatives attributed this act to depression.
In the summer of 2006, Zviad Gamsakhurdia's wife decided to reinter her husband's remains in Tbilisi. She appealed to the patriarchs of Russia and Georgia to help locate her husband's lost grave in the ruined capital of Chechnya. The search began in early 2007, and on March 3, Tsotne was present when his father's remains were discovered and exhumed. Tsotne immediately recognized his father through the cross, watch, shoes, and soil from Georgia that his relatives had placed in his grave during the reburial in Grozny. A forensic examination conducted in Rostov confirmed that the found remains indeed belonged to the first President of Georgia.
On the night of March 27-28, 2007, Tsotne transported his father's ashes to Georgia by land. At his request, Russian authorities temporarily opened the reconstructed border crossing point "Upper Lars" for this purpose. Later, Tsotne joined the Georgian opposition.
During the political crisis in Georgia in the fall of 2007, the security services released video recordings indicating that Tsotne had been conspiring with Russian intelligence officers working at the Russian Embassy in Tbilisi to overthrow the country's President, Mikhail Saakashvili. Tsotne and Georgian opposition activist Shalva Natelashvili were accused of espionage for Russia and attempting to forcefully change the state system but were not arrested. Charges against Natelashvili were dropped, but Tsotne fled the country.
For nearly a year, Tsotne lived in Russia, worked as a political analyst, and wrote articles calling for the "liberation of Georgia from US neocolonialism" and the fight against the "Saakashvili regime."
On September 4, 2008, Tsotne Gamsakhurdia was arrested by the Constitutional Security Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia at Tbilisi International Airport on charges of conspiring to forcibly change the constitutional system. Tsotne's stepbrother, Konstantine, the leader of the opposition party "Freedom," stated that Tsotne had returned to Georgia to answer the investigation's questions, and his arrest marked the beginning of mass repressions planned by Saakashvili. If convicted, Tsotne faces 5 to 8 years of imprisonment. Tsotne's lawyer stated that his client does not admit guilt. Additionally, Tsotne was charged separately for a 9-year-old case involving causing bodily harm to Maglakelidze.
