"This was an instance of gas poisoning. An Iranian gas heater was installed in this room. This must have happened suddenly, as Mr Zhvania was sitting in the armchair at that time...," Internal Affairs Minister Vano Merabishvili said a few hours after Zhvania’s body was found.

Police initially said the flat had been rented by Usupov.


Announcement in a newspaper about apartments rent

The nature of the relationship between the two men has been the subject of gossip and conjecture here.


   Raul Usupov

Raul Usupov’s father Yasha said that his son had good relations with the prime minister. According to investigators, Zhvania's cell phone number was found in Raul Usupov's cell phone contact list. However, the prime minister's brother Giorgi Zhvania said that Zurab Zhvania had not used that particular number for a year before his death. Parliament member Vasil Maghlaperidze said publicly after Zhvania died that Usupov has asked for help in contacting the prime minister, perhaps suggesting that the two men were not that well acquainted.

Pictures of the flat on Saburtalo Street were published later. They showed a table with an opened cognac bottle atop it. Nearby was a backgammon board.






The pictures gave the impression that Zhvania and his guest had a late supper, drank, and died from fumes emitted by an incorrectly installed gas heater.

Government officials have refused to provide any more details to journalists over the past year. Although from time to time, stories citing "leaked information" with no attribution appear in the local press.
According to Georgian law, Zhvania’s relatives have the right to access investigation materials. Citing these materials, the brother and wife of the late prime minister have stated repeatedly that they do not trust the official investigation.
Giorgi Zhvania says it’s his belief his brother was already dead when he was brought to the flat on Saburtalo Street. Giorgi Zhvania believes the scene at the flat was staged.

When asked to explain why he believes this, Georgi Zhvania says the investigation showed that no fingerprints of the prime minister and deputy governor were found in the room where they allegedly spent the night.

Zhvania says other details of the investigation do not add up.

According to the early story that I quickly reconstructed, Zhvania left his office at the State Chancellery at around 22:55 on February 2, 2005. He was first driven to his mother's flat, and then 35-40 minutes later, went the apartment on Saburtalo Street.

"For example, initially, one of the [prime minister's] bodyguards Mikheil Dzadzamia gave evidence that, before taking the prime minister to this flat, he went to the supermarket in Saakadze Square for food," Giorgi Zhvania told me.



Mikheil Dzazamia

"When I learned about this evidence, I noted that the supermarket in Saakadze Square closes at 22:00 hours.”

The late premier’s brother said three days after that contradiction emerged, a new version of events was produced, according to which Dzadzamia was said to have visited a different shop. That shop is on Saburtalo Street, not Saakadze Street, and it is open until midnight.

In particular, according to Dzadzamia's statements, he himself switched on the gas heater in the flat in Saburtalo Street when Zhvania arrived just before midnight.
However, Giorgi Zhvania said that according to cell phone company logs, Dzadzamia could not have been in the flat at that time.
He said the logs showed that at roughly the same time, 23:59, a call from Dzadzamia's cell phone was placed from the Didube area of Tbilisi.
That’s several kilometres away from Saburtalo Street and the apartment where Zhvania died.

According to the official investigation, Zhvania’s chief bodyguard, Koba Kharshiladze, arrived at the flat where the prime minister was at 4:00. Dzadzamia is said to have opened a window by pushing it with his hand.


    Koba Kharshiladze

Kharshiladze then squeezed into the room through the window. He reported that he found the prime minister dead.
However, when a re-enactment of the sequence of events was carried out, Kharshiladze failed to push open the window in the same manner.



Giorgi Zhvania, who witnessed the re-enactment, told me that Kharshiladze then changed his story, “After this, he [Kharshiladze] said that he penetrated through another window.

“However, as it turned out, that window had been bolted shut from the inside.”

Correspondingly, the bodyguard could not have opened the window with just a push.



Moreover, had the window been open, Georgi Zhvania told, carbon monoxide would not have accumulated in the room. According to the investigation's account, carbon monoxide poisoning was the cause of death.



Investigators told  they could not comment on any of these allegations, citing the ongoing investigation.

Koba Kharshiladze was appointed vice measure Old Tbilisi. This increase was in honor of thanksgiving. Former head of the bodyguard after the murder Zhvania took keys from safe of  Zhvania and devastated it. After Goga Zhvania raised the alarm about this fact, Koba Kharshiladze returned part of things. On this point, no criminal action was brought against Kharshiladze.




*****

TV journalist  Irakli Imnaishvili  took a five-minute interview with the internal affairs minister Vano  Merabishvili.


 Vano Merabishvili

Imnaishvili said he asked him only one question, "How could you have concluded just a few hours after the premier's death that his death was accidental?”

According to the journalist, the minister cited the smell of gas in the room. However, Imnaishvili pointed out that carbon monoxide is colourless and odourless.

In addition, Imnaishvili said his bosses at Mze TV forbade him to broadcast the interview with Merabishvili. Later, the journalist said, officers from the internal affairs ministry came and confiscated the cassette.

There are also questions as to irregularities the night in the gas supply system of the Saburtalo district of Tbilisi where Zhvania died.

According to records of the emergency service of Tbilgazi, Tbilisi’s gas distribution company, on February 2 the gas pressure unexpectedly rose in the area where the apartment where Zhvania died.

A Tbilgazi employee, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a lock on a pressure control box had inexplicably been broken into.

There are also questions about the autopsy, which placed the late premier’s time of death at between three and five o'clock in the morning.

According to the same Tbilgazi registry, the gas emergency service came to the area near the site at 2:45, and shut off the gas at 2:55.

But Zurab Zhvania’s bodyguard Dzadzamia told investigators that the gas was apparently on when he reached the flat an hour and five minutes after the gas utility said it cut supplies.

Dzadzamia testified that when he entered the room at 4:00, he heard the gas heater sizzling. Dzadzamia reportedly asked another bodyguard to shut it off.

Sceptics of the preliminary official version of Zhvania’s death also point to contradictions in the Georgian government’s account of reports by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, FBI, concerning Zhvania’s death.

The actual FBI report contradicted Georgian claims that the bureau’s investigators corroborated findings that the Iranian-made stove was capable of producing lethal levels of carbon monoxide.
However, the Georgian language translation of the report widely published in the Georgian press gave an exactly opposite account. It claimed FBI tests at the flat concluded the stove could indeed have produced lethal levels toxic gas.

When asked to explain such a major discrepancy, Giga Bokeria, a leader of president Saakashvili’s parliamentary bloc, called it “simply a translation error”???

Parliament itself, dominated by the president’s supporters, last year refused an opposition call for an independent commission to be formed to look into Zhvania’s death.

                                                                  ©   Olga Sikharulidze  2006






At least a couple of thousand people gathered in a downtown Tbilisi park late in the evening on October 5, 2007 to attend an outdoor screening of a film by an investigative reporter, Vakhtang Komakhidze, about the circumstances surrounding the death of the late PM, Zurab Zhvania.

Friday's investigative film also focuses on the mysterious murder of Levan Samkharauli, who was the chief of the Georgian National Forensics Bureau (NFB).


 Levan Samkharauli

He tried to add to those materials which indicated that the fingerprints Zhvania and Yusupov were found in the apartment.
He had been present during the examination of the heater at the NFB.

Samkharauli was gunned down three months later in the eastern Georgian town of Kvareli. The "murderer" was his classmate and best friend David Mchedlishvili. According to police accounts, the murder suspect committed suicide shortly after killing Samkharauli.

Based on the investigation, he committed suicide from two different weapons. One shot in the head and another shot in the heart. Time interval of 30 seconds. Of course this is not real.


David Mchedlishvili, "murder" of Samkharauli.

A forensic expert, who carried out a post-mortem examination, however, has confirmed that Samkharauli's murder suspect died of two bullet wounds – one to the head and the other to the heart.


  A forensic expert

                                              
*****

Although lacking any evidence, Irakli Okruashvili’s claim that the evidence surrounding the death of the late prime minister, Zurab Zhvania, was fabricated, was “very important,” the former PM's relatives said on September 26.

Speaking in an interview with Imedi TV on September 25, Okruashvili, who was Defense Minister at the time of Zhvania’s death, claimed that Zhvania’s corpse had actually been brought into the flat where it was apparently discovered. He added, however, that he was not prepared to speculate on the issue and refused to say “that Zhvania was murdered.”


   Irakli Okruashvili

Goga Zhvania, the late PM’s brother, said it was “very important” to hear a former government insider making this statement.

                                                                 © Olga Sikharulidze, 2007.