Abkhaz Prosecutor General's Office to take 1 month to analyze suspended interior minister's remarks
SUKHUM. July 6 (Interfax) - The Abkhaz Prosecutor General's Office will legally assess suspended Interior Minister Leonid Dzapshba's remarks, because of which the opposition resorted to mass unrest near the Interior Ministry building on Tuesday, Prosecutor General Alexei Lomiya said.
"Members of the opposition addressed the prosecution service in mid-June with a request that Interior Minister Leonid Dzapshba's remarks be assessed. A commission was set up exactly at the time to monitor the situation surrounding the referendum scheduled for July 10, and it was instructed to probe the issue as well," Lomiya said at a press conference in Sukhum on Wednesday.
"The inquiry is under way, and a legal assessment will certainly be made regardless of what happened yesterday or today. There is a procedural deadline for this, which is 30 days from the moment a motion was filed, and we are going to meet it," he said.
Three former Abkhaz interior ministers had forwarded a petition to President Raul Khajimba on June 20 to demand Dzapshba's dismissal. The authors of the petition claimed that, "at a meeting with the Interior Ministry's top officials, Leonid Dzapshba demanded that policemen not take part in the referendum under the threat of being dismissed."
Former Abkhaz Security Service chief Aslan Bzhania, now an opposition leader, said at the time that "the interior minister's actions fall under Abkhaz Criminal Code Article 136 dealing with 'hindering a citizen from exercising their right to take part in a referendum committed by an individual occupying an official position'."
About 700 participants in an unsanctioned opposition rally near the Abkhaz State Philharmonic Society in Sukhum on Tuesday adopted a resolution demanding that the date of a referendum on a vote of confidence in President Khajimba be postponed to the fall and declared that they would insist on Dzapshba's dismissal because of "the deterioration of the crime situation and actions aimed at violating the people's constitutional rights related to participation in a referendum."
Later in the day, protesters attempted to storm the Interior Ministry. Some of them managed to break the outer gates and reach the square in front of the ministry's building. To prevent the activists from entering the building, security forces deployed a fire engine, but there was no necessity to use it.
The rally was stopped after Abkhaz Vice President Vitaly Gabnia proclaimed the president's decree on suspending Dzapshba during a prosecutorial inquiry into his actions.
