A report aired by the Tbilisi-based Imedi television’s Droeba (Times) weekly program on March 18 alleged that Pridon Chakaberia, an ethnic Georgian who served as a head of the village in the Gali District of breakaway Abkhazia was jailed only because of his cooperation with the Abkhaz de facto authorities.

Pridon Chakaberia, head of the administration of the Kvemo Bargebi village, was arrested by the Georgian law enforcers on December 4, 2006 and charged with drug-trafficking. He was arrested in Zugdidi, a Georgian town at the administrative border with breakaway Abkhazia, where he arrived to repair some agricultural equipment, according to the Imedi TV. But the Georgian police claimed he was in Zugdidi to sell heroin.

A court in Zugdidi found Chakaberia guilty of drug trafficking and sentenced him to 10-year imprisonment on February 16, 2007.

TV report said that investigators have not even interrogated “major witnesses” into the case, whose testimonies would have challenged the law enforcers’ allegations against Chakaberia.

TV coverage also contained several interviews with local Georgian residents of the Kvemo Bargebi village hailing Chakaberia as a person “taking care about the village and its residents” and complaining against the Georgian authorities because of his arrest. A woman, also a local resident, told the television that locals are “afraid, as each of us can be arrested just because of our presence here” in the Gali District.

“Just ask yourself, in Georgia, what has this new government [in Georgia] has said or done which would make an Abkhazian say or think: maybe it is really better to live with Georgians?” Ruslan Kishmaria, the Abkhaz leader Sergey Bagapsh envoy in the Gali District, told Imedi TV.

According to the television a large part of local population in the Gali District is unemployed and only small part of them serves in the Abkhaz militia and the army; taxes are paid by the locals in the Abkhaz budget and heads of administrations in the 18 villages of the Gali District are ethnic Georgians.

“Chakaberia was actually punished as ‘a traitor’ and it has been done by the country which has not punished even a single politician who was behind inciting armed conflict [in Abkhazia in early 90s]… instead, it [the state] has severely punished an ordinary man [Pridon Chakaberia],” an author of the TV report said.