Public Defender, Giorgi Tugushi, told lawmakers on June 14, that he was “concerned over excessive use force” by the police during break up of street protest rally on May 26.

During delivering his 2010 human rights report to the Parliament, Tugushi said that although the May 26 events were not part of reporting period, he wanted to stress on those developments in order to highlight the Parliament’s oversight functions.

“I decided to stress on those events in order the Parliament to pay due attention to a reaction by the executive authorities towards the cases of violations”, which took place during the May 26 developments, Tugushi told lawmakers.

He said that excessive use of force by the police was “obvious” with cases of beating and mistreating protesters even those who were no longer resisting. The human rights ombudsman also said that there were cases of beating those protesters, who were already arrested.

Tugushi also said that as a result of monitoring of detention centers representatives of his office recorded that most of the arrested protesters had various types of injuries with many of them saying that wounds were sustained after being arrested by the police.

He also noted cases of attacks on journalists by the police during the break up of the May 26 rally, saying that those cases of “physical insult” on journalists constituted crime and added that he had already called on the prosecutor’s office to investigate those cases.