28-year-old inmate inflicting injury on his head, dies

A 28-year-old prisoner Guram Svanidze, who allegedly ambushed a Penitentiary Service employee last week while in the Mental Health and Drug Addiction Prevention Centre in the Georgian capital and inflicted injury on his head, died on Thursday in a clinic, doctors and relatives confirmed.

The country’s Penitentiary Service said last Saturday that after taking the escort’s gun, Svanidze fired at the employees of the Escort Division once and then inflicted an injury on his own head.

Following the incident,  on Tuesday,  the Tbilisi City Court denied bail for Valery Gozalishvili, an escort employee of the Penitentiary Service, who had been charged with neglect of official duties.

The family of the deceased inmate had expressed distrust of the investigation, claiming that the man in the video released by the Penitentiary Service depicted “someone else”not the deceased man.