30 December 2008, 22:00
Georgia applies to "Memorial" with a request to locate a captured soldier
Mamuka Areshidze, director of the "Caucasian Strategic Studies Center", has handed to the "Memorial" organization the request of Georgian authorities to locate captured soldier Sergo Melia.
Tamaz Melia, father of the soldier who disappeared after the August events, is sure that his son Sergo is kept prisoner of war in the Russian Federation.
"He can not have been killed. He is not in Vladicavkaz either. He has been taken to Russia. After the bombing, he was wounded, however, he remained alive, as confirmed by the photograph found in the Internet", stated Tamaz Melia in an interview to the Georgian news agency GeoHotNews.
The "Caucasian Knot" reported earlier that, on December 18, during the meeting of Georgian and Russian public representatives at the "Memorial" office, Mamuka Areshidze, director of the "Caucasian Strategic Studies Center", cited some statistics according to which, as of then, about 30 prisoners of war were held by Ossetians and 9 by Georgians.
Mamuka Areshidze handed the "Memorial", which is interested in the fate of the lost soldier, the request of the Georgian authorities to contact the journalist who saw the unconscious Sergo Melia.
According to an expert, the "Memorial" has already located a Georgian military serviceman who disappeared after the August events. The soldier whom Areshidze did not name is kept in North Caucasus. The search has been facilitated by the fact that a civil suit was initiated against the serviceman in Russia.
