Accomplice of terrorist Chatayev detained in joint Georgian Security Service and Interior Ministry operation

Georgian State Security Service and the Interior Ministry acted jointly to detain 21-year-old Ruslan Shavadze, an accomplice of the Islamic State terrorist Akhmed Chatayev who blew himself up in Tbilisi last year during a counter-terrorism operation.

Before his detention in Georgia’s western coastal town of Batumi yesterday, Shavadze was sentenced to 13 years in prison by Tbilisi City Court for membership in a foreign terrorist organisation, supporting terrorism and illegally crossing the border.

The Georgian State Security Service reported that Chatayev, Shavadze and Ibragim Adashev were together when they illegally crossed the Georgia-Turkey border on October 27, 2017, to make plans for terrorist acts against Georgian and Turkish diplomats.

Other affiliates in Georgia, who were also sentenced to prison by Georgian courts last month, were also involved in helping the individuals illegally cross the Kirnati-Maradidi section of the border.

Chatayev, with Adashev and Shavadze, as well as some other members of the criminal group, accommodated in a flat in Tbilisi on the street of Gabriel Monk, which was beforehand chosen by the group members,” the Georgian State Security Service says.

It was the flat where the Georgian State Security Service conducted the counter-terrorism raid on November 21-22, when two terrorists-Ibragim Adashev and Aslanbeg Soltakhmadov were killed and Chatayev blew himself up,” the State Security  Service said, adding that one associate Shoaip Borziev was detained alive.

The State Security Service says that Shavadze left the flat several hours before the special operation and went into hiding.

Shavadze illegally left for Turkey in 2016 and shortly after joined Chatayev’s group on the territory of Syria and Iraq, taking part in offensives.

Shavadze was with Chatayev when the latter left Syria and Iraq and moved to Turkey, from where they returned back in Georgia.

During the November raid one Georgian special unit serviceman Ivane Golashvili was killed and several others injured.