After the war in August of 2008 for several weeks after hostilities were suspended in the zone attached to the state boundary between the Republic of South Ossetia and Georgia seven innocent civilians, citizens of South Ossetia were missed. Among the missing Ossetian citizens were under age children.
From the very beginning of the Geneva talks work the delegation of the Republic of South Ossetia has been constantly raising the question of the fate of missing at all the meetings. The facts indicating the involvement of the Georgian military and policing branch in the disappearance of missing Ossetia people were revealed. Video materials and testimonial evidence testify that the missing were in the places of detention on the territory of Georgia where they underwent cruel treatment.
At the request of South Ossetia the group of international experts was monitoring the conducting of investigation of the missing cases. It is ascertained that Georgian side only imitated the investigation. In fact the representatives of the Georgian Ministry of Internal Affairs did everything to debar from revelation of circumstances concerning the disappearance of the missing citizens of South Ossetia, the places of their detention and their further fate.
On the contrary South-Ossetia side took all measures in order to search missing citizens of Georgia. All the information on the people missing during the hostilities on the territory of South Ossetia and looking for by Georgian side was offered, and moreover, twice- on 26 August, 2008 and 16 November, 2008 South Ossetia gave to Georgia the remains of Georgian servicemen and other combatants who took part from the Georgian side in the aggression against South Ossetia in August 2008. It should be noted that Georgian representatives refused to open the coffins when passing the exhumed bodies to them to carry out identification and make corresponding reports.
Corresponding structures of South Ossetia carried out activities on identification of the bodies to find out if they were citizens of the RSO or they were Russian servicemen, and the refusal of Georgian representatives to open the coffins was recorded in due report which was also signed by the Georgian side.
On 11 May, 2011 at the meeting organized by International Committee of the Red Cross a Georgian Representative declared that eight bodies out of general number of exhumed remains given to Georgian side ware not identified and did not belong to individuals who are looked for as missing by the Georgian side. In addition he made assumption that the bodies which were not identified could belong to missing Ossetian people and suggested to take samples of DNA from the relatives of missing people.
Everything stated above and taking into consideration the facts indicating complicity of Georgian law enforcement agencies in disappearance of the missing Ossetan, the evidence of cruel treatment, and also the practice of cruel treatment, torment, killing and extrajudicial executions carried out by the Georgian bodies of Internal Affairs cause concern that above mentioned Ossetian nationality could have been killed and Georgian side can pose their bodies as exhumed remains which were given to Georgia in 2008.
Taking into consideration the humanitarian significance of the problem and the risks which absence of progress in the problem of searching the missing creates for the peaceful settlement, South-Ossetian side calls to apply maximum effort in this direction, resume the monitoring of the course of investigation of the international expert group and affect the Georgian side in order to achieve clarity concerning the fate of South-Ossetian citizens missing in the period after the war of 2008.