According to the Democracy Research Institute, the statement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs regarding the footage released by TV Pirveli raises additional questions.

According to the organization, "the most serious events in the country in recent times, reflecting the violation of human rights, raise reasonable suspicions that the use of such cruel and illegal methods has become a common practice by the system."

“The Democracy Research Institute responds to the footage released yesterday, June 12, by TV Pirveli, which shows the facts of torture and inhuman treatment by police officers. Later, the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a statement, according to which the aforementioned fact occurred 4 years ago - in 2022, and all of them were arrested in February 2026. Despite acknowledging the fact, the agency does not specify the content of the charges brought.

The footage clearly shows that several police officers, with particular cruelty, are deliberately beating a citizen in a life-threatening area (mainly the head) with a heavy blow, in order to obtain the desired testimony. The fact of torture and inhuman treatment has been going on for a certain period of time.

The statement made by the agency regarding the most serious footage released on June 12 raises additional questions that must be answered immediately: what legal qualification was given to the case and at what stage is the investigation? Why did it take several years to detain those individuals whose identification was not a problem - the violence shown in the footage was carried out in the police system; Why did the public learn about this fact from the media and not from law enforcement agencies? In addition to those cases of violence about which the public receives information from the media, how many such cases have been identified and what is the response of the relevant agencies.

The most serious events reflecting human rights violations in recent times raise reasonable doubts that the use of such cruel and illegal methods by the system has become a common practice.

Even in the 2024 report of the Public Defender, there is talk of a series of extremely serious crimes committed by law enforcement agencies - torture and inhuman treatment, which were carried out during the crackdown on protests in November-December 2024. Despite the fact that numerous publicly available sources (including testimonies of victims) confirm how law enforcement officers beat hundreds of citizens in the face and head, and the torture of those detained in minibuses continued, after a journalistic investigation, the prosecutor's office brought charges against only 4 current and former law enforcement officers with incorrect qualifications. Against the background of these violent facts, the fact that in January 2025 11 senior officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, including several individuals subject to international sanctions for human rights violations, were awarded state awards for "special contributions to strengthening law and order" was alarming.

A video was also circulated on social networks on May 27 of this year, where a group of law enforcement officers in Gori physically and severely assaulted a citizen. The prosecutor's office charged the police officers with abuse of authority instead of torture.

The superficial response of the agencies to the most serious crimes, which involves the arrest of several police officers and the presentation of relatively minor charges, cannot even minimally reduce the acute crisis in the country. Such an approach, especially the selective response to acts of violence, incites the commission of the most serious crimes - and the facts of torture and inhuman treatment become an integral part of the system. Against this background, a dangerous trend is emerging that agencies use such severe actions against citizens as a form of police measures," reads the statement.