According to his opponents, one of the main indictments against Georgia’s former president Mikheil Saakashvili was the all-embracing surveillance system he created. During the rough decade of Saakashvili’s rule, you would often hear people muttering “we can’t talk about this on the phone” into their mobiles. People would travel out of Tbilisi to talk about anything confidential, taking the batteries out of their phones to avoid their conversations being picked up
Indeed, even Saakashvili isn’t immune from the system. Last autumn, two recordings of alleged phone conversations between Saakashvili, a senior Ukrainian public official and a Georgian IS commander were made public. Saakashvili may now be governor of Odessa, but back in Georgia the question of surveillance hasn’t gone away.
The power monopoly
“In those days when we picked up the phone we’d always say, ‘Hello, Vano’,” Sofio Khorguani, a former deputy ombudsman, tells me. ‘Vano’ refers to the interior minister of the time, Vano Merabishvili, an NGO activist who became one of the most influential men in the Georgian government after the Rose Revolution in 2003. Merabishvili was responsible for, among other things, surveillance operations in Georgia.
Back in 2006-2009, Sofio worked as deputy to ombudsman Sozara Subari. Sofio realised that things were going wrong when officials who had worked under Shevardnadze, the previous president, were dismissed from their posts without any severance package.
