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A former aide to the de factor leader of Georgia is at risk of torture, his lawyers have said, after he was arrested and deported to Tbilisi from his place of hiding in Dubai.
Giorgi Bachiashvili fled Georgia after falling out with the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, the honorary chair of the country’s ruling party, for whom he worked for more than a decade, overseeing his personal finances.
Two months ago, Bachiashvili was convicted in absentia by a Georgian court of stealing $42.7m in profits that was said to have been owed to Ivanishvili from a cryptocurrency investment.
While on the run, Bachiashvili accused his former mentor of aligning Georgia with Russia out of self-interest, claiming he was willing to sacrifice “the land, any interest for his personal wellbeing and security”.
Ivanishvili, who is under US sanctions for “undermining the democratic and Euro-Atlantic future of Georgia for the benefit of the Russian Federation” and violently repressing dissent, was prime minister of Georgia between 2012 and 2013. He is widely regarded as the controlling mind behind the current government.
Friends of Bachiashvili said he travelled to Jumeirah Beach hotel in Abu Dhabi to meet a local lawyer.
He was instead detained in the hotel’s lobby by a group of about eight members of the local security services before being transported to a police station in Dubai and put on a flight to Georgia, the sources said.
Bachiashvili, 39, was given the opportunity to call his family to inform them of his arrest but his location is not known.
Robert Amsterdam, a US-Canadian human rights lawyer who has been representing Bachiashvili, said: “We were caught completely off-guard by his arrest. He had local counsel; he had local team, and he seemed very comfortable with them. It appears he was simply arrested and then put on a plane immediately.
“We are deeply concerned about the use of torture. Georgia is notoriously dangerous and corrupt, so it’s a matter of real, grave concern.”
The UN committee against torture has cited “numerous and consistent allegations” of torture by Georgian law enforcement.
Amsterdam added: “I denounce in the strongest possible terms the ongoing instrumentalisation of domestic and international law and the abuse of mechanisms of international legal cooperation in Georgia’s relentless efforts to jail my client for speaking truth to power.”
Bachiashvili, speaking to the Guardian earlier this month, claimed that Ivanishvili had turned Georgia into a puppet state for Vladimir Putin after realising that western countries would not tolerate his continued control over the government.
He said: “I think that up until 2022 he had an illusion that Georgia would enter the EU under Ivanishvili’s shadow grip. It became evident that the EU will not accept Georgia with this sort of autocratic power.”
Lawyers for Ivanishivili have denied the claims.
