Bacho Akhalaia hid behind his wife’s back while planning to overthrow the country; he did not even dare to leave the responsibility to himself and spare his wife, said Shalva Papuashvili, Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia, commenting on the arrest of former Defense Minister Bacho Akhalaia in connection with the events of October 4.

According to Papuashvili, Akhalaia was using his wife, Ani Nadareishvili, as a spokesperson.

“We live in this country. This didn’t happen 10 or 20 years ago - it was very recent. We saw what was going on, the meetings with him. He had appointed his wife as a spokesperson. Even if they don’t believe what we saw, it was clearly visible from the radicals’ side as well. Tamar Chergoleishvili herself assessed the actions of Bacho Akhalaia’s wife, who acted as a spokesperson and was organizing gatherings aimed at overthrowing the government. A person who had not previously been notable for political activity suddenly, for two or three months, was intensely and directly calling on people to gather on October 4 to overthrow the government and was attacking critical opinions. Everything was obvious.

Bacho Akhalaia did not even protect his own wife. It was logical that the State Security Service would have questions for his wife, in whose name the IP address is registered. He could not even show this quality - to remove the blame from his wife, knowing that she is a figure in the case. If there is other evidence, of course, investigative bodies will assess her criminal responsibility.

Just as he used his wife’s IP address to devise a revolutionary plan, we saw how frequent his contacts were with these plotters; likewise, he used his wife as a spokesperson. He hid behind his wife’s back while planning to overthrow the country. He used Ani Nadareishvili as a spokesperson in the period preceding the attempted overthrow. It turned out that he was hiding behind her IP address to communicate with the plotters. In the end, he even sacrificed his wife to criminal liability. He didn’t even dare to take responsibility upon himself and remove it from his wife.

All the evidence is there - it’s not like 300,000 mythical Georgians could suddenly appear and generate that much communication from a single IP address. This communication between the plotters and the Akhalaia family has been confirmed at a technical and scientific level,” Papuashvili stated.