Zaza Saralidze urges to pardon his son's killers

Mikhail Kalandiya, who was sentenced to 11 years for killing a teenager in Tbilisi, should be released, and the accused Giorgi Menabde should not be sentenced, but all the high-ranking officials who interfere with justice should be punished. This was stated by Zaza Saralidze, the father of the killed teenager.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that Zaza Saralidze, the father of the teenager killed in Georgia, held protest actions in front of the building of the Georgian Parliament, demanding fair punishment for the murderers and the officials who had tried to cover them up. In April, 2021, Giorgi Menabde, who had been a witness in this case, was arrested. One of the two convicts for the murder testified that Menabde had stabbed the teenager.

Speaking on air of the "Pirveli" TV Company, Zaza Saralidze has stated that he agrees to release all those responsible for the death of his son from jail, if they "tell the truth." However, Saralidze intends to "fight to the end in order to punish the high-ranking officials who had obstructed the justice."

"Today I feel sorry for all these guys. I am directly addressing Salome Zurabishvili with a request to release them all," the "News-Georgia" quote the father of the murdered teenager as saying.

Zaza Saralidze believes that Kalandiya should be released, and Giorgi Menabde, whose trial has not ended yet, should not be sentenced at all, the "Sputnik-Georgia" has reported.

One of the reasons for the mass protests after the murder was the suspicion that investigators could cover up those responsible. In May 2018, the Chief Public Prosecutor of Georgia, Irakli Shotadze, resigned. In November of the same year, the court sentenced Merab Morchadze, a former high-ranking official of the Georgia's General Prosecutor's Office (GPO), to conditional imprisonment. In March 2019, the court sentenced Mirza Subeliani, a former high-ranking official of the GPO, to a year and a month of freedom deprivation. He confessed to not reporting the murder to law enforcement bodies.