Vice Speaker Tsilosani: Plea bargain follows admission of guilt; it is impossible while Burchuladze invokes “unlawful detention”

“A plea agreement will only be possible through an admission of guilt. As for Burchuladze invoking unlawful detention, for as long as they continue to use “unlawful detention” as a shield, a plea agreement will remain inconceivable,” the Vice Speaker of Parliament, Nino Tsilosani, has stated.

Tsilosani was asked about a statement made by Paata Burchuladze, convicted in the October 4 case, in which he said: “My call to those detained in the October 4 case is to accept the plea agreement offered by the Prosecutor’s Office and to secure your release from unlawful detention.”

“It appears that, in his public letter, Paata Burchuladze is saying that hopes have run out, both inside the country and abroad, for unlawful, illegitimate pressure, based on which they had expected to be released from detention without any rules or norms being followed. Now they are turning to the plea agreement instead. Paata Burchuladze’s appeal amounts to a call for those standing alongside him to accept a plea agreement.

A plea agreement will only be possible through an admission of guilt and genuine repentance. Accordingly, each of them will have to repent and admit to their guilt before Georgia. What comes through in his letter is a desire for his comrades, participants in the crime, to be released.

Presumably, after this, he too will wish to be released as a result of a plea agreement. This is probably a precondition for Paata Burchuladze himself agreeing to a plea agreement. Strangely, in his letter he brings up unlawful detention. For as long as they continue to use unlawful detention as a shield, a plea agreement will remain inconceivable.

I doubt this is genuine remorse. Rational motives drive them, and they have grown tired of being in detention. They committed a damaging crime against Georgia. Now they see that a plea agreement may offer a way out,” Nino Tsilosani stated.