Underworld figure David Peikrishvili, detained on charges of extortion and hospitalized from custody, stated during a court hearing that for four days he was subjected to torture in prison. According to him, the primary motive “was a phone.”
Peikrishvili alleges that the prison warden and the leadership of the Special Penitentiary Service were complicit in the abuse. He also stated that he was taken to the Vivamedi clinic with his injuries, and upon his return to the correctional facility, an entry was made falsely claiming that he had fallen from a height. After that, the violence continued.
“I have forty stitches. The mobile phone was in the prosecutor’s possession. Had it not been in their hands, they would have had no motive to place [people] into my cell and subject me to torture.
The main motive for the torture was the phone. The main thing they wanted was for me to unlock it. The prosecutor was supposed to guarantee the preservation of the sealed device… I was brutally beaten and tortured with them demanding: give us the password.
‘Unlock it, you have recordings on there,’ they said. I replied: guys, what recordings?.. The prosecutor may not have been carrying the phone in his pocket, but my procedural rights were grossly violated.”
According to Peikrishvili, he was kept in complete isolation — “the only chance was to hold out until Monday, until my lawyer’s visit.”
Reports regarding the beating of David Peikrishvili, held in Penitentiary Institution No. 8 (Gldani Prison), surfaced on October 19. According to his defense attorney, criminal bosses Vato Kipiani, Shota Kipiani, Avtandil Bilanishvili (known as “Katsro”), and two other inmates were placed into his cell. They were the ones who beat his client.
On the same day, the Penitentiary Service issued a statement in which it “categorically denied” that any beating had occurred.
However, Justice Minister Paata Salia later confirmed that David Peikrishvili was not alone in the cell and that other individuals had been placed with him. The Prosecutor’s Office has opened a criminal case.
Brothers Giorgi and David Peikrishvili were arrested on September 22 on charges of group violence and extortion.