Parliament passed a resolution on February 22 asking the chief prosecutor’s office “to react appropriately” on new facts and circumstances surrounding the death of Georgia’s ousted President Zviad Gamsakhurdia seventeen years ago.

The resolution was passed based on a report tabled by an ad hoc parliamentary commission, chaired by MP Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, son of the late President.

For more than a year the commission was studying circumstances of Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s death in December, 1993 in a remote village of western Georgian region of Samegrelo, less than two years after he was ousted in a military coup. He died from a gunshot to the head.

The official investigation, carried out in 1990s, found that Gamsakhurdia committed suicide – the clam disputed by many of his supporters.

The ad hoc commission was mandated with a task to find out whether the suicide version was in line with actual facts and circumstances; the commission had a mandate “to study” and not the mandate “to investigate” – the latter gives more powers to ad hoc parliamentary commissions.

According to the commission’s report the investigation into Gamsakhurdia’s death was carried out with negligence of crucial circumstances and through ignorance of major evidence. It says that key evidence, including gun and also a bullet, from which Gamsakhurdia allegedly committed suicide disappeared. According to the report there are multiple inconsistencies in the official investigation, which give a reason to cast doubt over its conclusions that Gamsakhurdia committed suicide.