In 2009, the Parliament of Georgia adopted a new Criminal Procedure Code. According to the code, the rules of interrogation of witnesses should be changed.
According to the Code of Criminal Procedure 1898, an investigation and prosecution stages witnesses have been interrogated by investigator/prosecutor, while under the new code, witnesses should be interrogated only by a magistrate judge at the investigation stage.
Enactment of this regulation has been postponed several times and January 1, 2016, has been set as the deadline. The reason of such delays was always reported to be the fact that the prosecutor’s office and the relevant agencies were not prepared to conduct the interrogation before a judge.
Open Society Georgia Foundation is actively working on the issue. Representatives of Foundation held a number of meetings and took part in discussions around this issue, also participated in the working group of the Parliament on the interrogation of witnesses and collaborated with international experts in researching Georgian and foreign practices.
With the support and initiative of OSGF, international criminal experts and professors Richard Vogler and Bas de Wilde conducted comparative legal research. Presentation and discussion of the research have been held on August 7, 2015, at the Holiday Inn Hotel.
The research presents a comparative analysis of Georgian legislation on witness interrogation rules and legislation of England, Wales, the United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands and practice of the European Court of Human Rights.
International experts and representatives of the court, prosecutor’s office, parliament and non-governmental organizations presented their positions during a roundtable meeting held on August 7. Author of the research, Richard Vogler provided recommendations to his Georgian colleagues with regard to what measures should be taken for reforming the procedure of interrogation of witnesses in Georgia.
Roundtable meeting was opened by the professor Richard Vogler and the Executive Director of Open Society Georgia Foundation Keti Khutsishvili.
Presentations on the reform of witness interrogation procedure were delivered by chairperson of the Supreme Court – Nino Gvenetadze, Deputy Minister of Justice of Georgia – Alexander Baramidze, Chairman of the Legal Affairs Committee – Vakhtang Khmaladze, Head of the Department of Prosecutorial Activities Supervision and Strategic Development – Natia Mezvrishvili and lawyer of Human Rights Education and Monitoring Center – Guram Imnadze.
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