Two lawmakers from the parliamentary minority group quit a commission in charge of considering applications from convicts for pardon, in protest against halving of prison term for four former Interior Ministry officials convicted for the Sandro Girgvliani murder case.

Dimitri Shashkin, the minister for probation and penitentiary system, confirmed on March 12 that four men were among those 45 convicts, who served in the law enforcement agencies and who became eligible for the presidential pardon in November, 2008. The Minister, however, also stressed that unlike others, those four men were not released but instead their prison terms were only halved.

Giorgi Tsagareishvili and Roman Marsagishvili, lawmakers from the parliamentary minority group and members of the Pardoning Commission, said on March 13, that they were quitting the commission as they were not at all aware about the President’s decision to pardon four men jailed for the Girgvliani case.

The parliamentary minority group was actively engaged in the process of series of amnesties and presidential pardon that was carried out late last year. For that reason, those lawmakers now had to make extensive explanations in order to distance themselves from the case involving pardoning of convicts for the Girgvliani case, as their pardoning is viewed to be unpopular move.

The President has the right to unilaterally pardon an inmate, bypassing the commission. The lawmakers from the parliamentary minority group claimed that so far they were not shown the list of inmates, who were pardoned by the President without prior consultations with the Pardon Commission.

Elene Tevdoradze, a former lawmaker who is now deputy state minister for reintegration issues and also a chairperson of the Pardon Commission, said that she had learned about the pardoning of the four men from the Minister Shashkin’s announcement and it was “a surprise” for her.

Minister Shashkin made the announcement after the opposition New Rights Party broke the news earlier on March 12.