“Young Barristers” comments on the so called “Cable Case”  proceeding at the Court of Appeals and urges court authority of the country  to start research  Tbilisi City Court judge, David Jugheli’s activities and open to the public society his family relationships with the members of  the political party “Free Democrats”. The organization regards, that the court should take all  possible actions to  avoid political influence over the judiciary. 

“Young Barristers” thinks, that Tbilisi City Court decision of June 5, 2015, raises  certain professional questions. The judge has made a “new” interpretation of the law in the process of considering admissibility of the case, by restricting commodity expert to carry out market research. This is quite a rare  approach  in the history of Georgian judicial practice. It should be noted, that  since 2011 up today, Levan Samkharauli National Forensics Bureau has issued  thousands of different  commodity expertise conclusions, and in each case, market research was implemented by experts. The court in all cases regarded these evidences  admissible. The judge, David Jugheli himself, has attached more then 250 such conclusions to the cases as admissible evidences, however, he has not substantiated his decision to reject conclusion of the expertise in this case. The judge has questioned Levan Samkharauli National Forensics Bureau expert opinion without any justification.  

Court’s approach towards this high profile case reveals judge’s attempt to implement “selective justice”. The organization has already requested David Jugheli to either confirm or deny his possible family relationships with the representatives of the political party of the former Defense Minister.  According to the preliminary information, David Jugheli is  Kakha Chikhradze’s cousin. The latter is  a Head of the Security Service of the political party “Free Democrats”.  It is known, that in the autumn 2012, Kakha Chikhradze was appointed on the position of the Head of the Military Police Department of the Defense Ministry. Therefore, there is a high possibility that private contacts have significantly influenced court decision regarding the Cable Case. 

“Young Barristers” states, that pre-trial hearing of the case lasted more than 2 and a half months, which is also unprecedented. This may be regarded as a breach of the principle of impartiality and may serve to an attempt to prolong 9 month period of accusation and  hamper rapid and effective implementation of justice. Young Barristers declares that no court decision on the so called  “Cable Case”  has   been enforced so far.

We would like to mention, that “Young Barristers” has been studying logistics issues of the Defense Ministry  since 2013. After monitoring over the “Soldiers’ Intoxication” case, the organization got interested in the issue of honesty of the company “Silknet” in record of the agreement concluded with the Ministry in 2013 and expressed its own assumptions regarding the issue.