E/CN.4/2001/66 page 102 509. Georgi Kapanadze, a journalist with the newspaper Resonansi, and Sergey Belousov, a photographer, were allegedly assaulted by officers from division three of the Mtskheta district traffic police in Tbilisi on 14 October 1999. They were said to have been assaulted after they intervened on behalf of another person, whom the police had reportedly beaten severely. 510. Davit Vashaqmadze and Zaza Buadze were reportedly asked for their documents while in a car on Tavisupleba Square in Tbilisi on the evening of 13 November 1999. Two police officers are said to have pulled the two men out of the car and started to beat them. Several other police officers also reportedly joined in the beating. They were then told that they would be taken to Mtatsminda police station, but were reportedly instead taken to a location outside the city centre, where the beatings are said to have continued. Davit Vashaqmadze is said to have suffered multiple fractures and other serious injuries, and to have died in hospital two days later. An investigation was reportedly opened by the Tbilisi City Procurator’s Office. 511. Dato Natelashvili was allegedly beaten at the temporary detention facility of Tbilisi Main City Police Department over a period of two days after being transferred there from the Interior Ministry’s investigation-isolation prison No. 1 (Ortachala prison) on 19 November 1999. At the station, he was allegedly subjected to electric shock treatment in order to force him to confess to a murder. During his detention at the Main City Police Department, he was said to have been denied access to his family and lawyers. 512. Jincharadze and Abashidze, journalists working for the television station of the autonomous region of Ajaria, had reportedly travelled to Qvareli, in the eastern region of Kakheti, in order to cover the second round of the Georgian parliamentary elections set for 14 November 1999. On 12 November, they were allegedly assaulted by Qvareli police. 513. Zaza Tsotsolashvili is said by the police to have thrown himself from the sixth floor window of the Ministry of Internal Affairs building in Tbilisi on 4 December 1999. He was reportedly taken to hospital, but died shortly afterwards the same day. The Ministry of Internal Affairs has reportedly initiated an investigation, and criminal proceedings have also been instituted by the Krtsanisi District Procurator’s Office in Tbilisi. 514. Ivane Kolbaya reportedly fell to his death on 22 March from the fifth floor window of the Tbilisi Central Police Department while being questioned by police officers about alleged thefts. His death was said to have been regarded officially by police as suicide, although the head of the Georgian forensic medical centre, is reported to have said that forensic medical examiners did not have the capacity to determine conclusively whether the trauma marks they found on Ivane Kolbaya’s body were the result of the fall or were sustained prior to his death. 515. Irakli Tshigladze, aged 14, Nick Kutelia and Emil Aivazashvili., both aged 15, were said to have been arrested on 20 December 1999 and detained at the Mtatsminda police station. They were allegedly beaten in the police car taking them to the police station and at the police station. They were reportedly held in separate rooms and forced in the absence of their parents or their lawyers to write confessions that they had robbed several cars. On the morning following the arrests lawyers at the station are reported to have raised these allegations with the police department and the prosecutor’s office.