20 years later: Three sentenced in absentia in South Ossetia for "collaboration with Georgian intelligence"

Karkusov brothers: Georgian-Ossetian conflict

Nearly 20 years later, three local residents of South Ossetia have been sentenced in absentia to lengthy prison terms on charges of working for Georgian intelligence services. All three – Yan Karkusov, Georgy Gogichaev, and Alan Karkusov – are declared fugitives.

Curiously, there is actually no need to search for Yan Karkusov. His whereabouts are already well known – a Russian prison, where he is serving time for murder.

Let’s find out who the Karkusov brothers are and what exactly they are accused of.

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The elusive Karkusov brothers

Yan Karkusov and his brother Jemal are infamous figures in South Ossetia.

Jemal Karkusov held various positions of authority in South Ossetia over the years, including heading the Security Council and the ministry of internal affairs. However, in 2004, he began to face issues with the authorities.

“The crux of the matter is that Jemal maintained contacts with the former minister of internal Affairs, Alan Parastayev, who defected to Georgia during the military phase of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict in the 1990s,” eyewitnesses of those events told JAMnews.

In March 2005, Jemal and Yan Karkusov were arrested on charges of possessing weapons and ammunition and were sentenced to four years in prison.

However, in November 2005, both of them escaped from the prison in Tskhinvali and relocated to territory under Tbilisi’s control.

The South Ossetian law enforcement agencies requested assistance from the Georgian side in their arrest, but their request was denied.

Back then, Georgian MIA head Vano Merabishvili claimed Georgian intel organized the escape, with Karkusov brothers shielded by Georgian special forces.

Merabishvili also reminded that Jemal Karkusov is a citizen of Georgia.

Later, their third brother, Uruzmag, joined Jemal and Yan in Tbilisi. In the mid-2000s, all three collaborated with the so-called “alternative government” created in Tbilisi. In South Ossetia, it was recognized as a terrorist organization.

The “alternative government” was the leadership of the temporary administrative unit in the territory of the former South Ossetian Autonomous Region, established by the decree of the president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, on May 10, 2007. Dmitry Sanakoyev was appointed as its leader, and his powers extended to those settlements in South Ossetia where Georgians lived.

Jemal Karkusov became the minister of internal affairs of the alternative government, and Yan became an advisor to Dmitry Sanakoyev. For many of their compatriots in South Ossetia, this was seen as tantamount to treason and state betrayal from both a moral and legal perspective.

However, after the August 2008 war, Yan and Jemal Karkusovs fled again, this time from Georgia to Russia. In their interviews with Russian media, they criticized Mikhail Saakashvili.

For a long time, nothing was heard about the Karkusov brothers. They only resurfaced in March 2016. Specifically, Yan resurfaced. He was accused of shooting two people with a rifle over a debt of 200,000 rubles (about $2,000). For this, a Russian court sentenced him to 15 years in prison, where he remains to this day.

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It’s unclear why only one of the brothers was convicted, as well as who the other two individuals are in this case.

After 19 years, the Supreme Court of South Ossetia convicted Yan Karkusov in absentia for “preparing terrorist acts in South Ossetia at the behest of Georgian intelligence services” and sentenced him to 22 years in prison.

The other two defendants in this case, Georgy Gogichaev and Alan Karkusov, were also sentenced in absentia to 19 years each.

South Ossetian law enforcement authorities claim that Georgy Gogichaev and Alan Karkusov “in April 2006, foreseeing the possibility of socially dangerous consequences and desiring their occurrence, acting on the instructions of Georgian intelligence services for monetary reward, committed a series of criminal acts on the territory of the Republic of South Ossetia.”

However, none of the sources interviewed by JAMnews could remember who they are. Their current whereabouts are also unknown.

Amiran Diakonov, a member of the South Ossetian parliament from the “People’s party,” considers these sentences fair but notes that the convicted individuals may hold Russian citizenship (as in the case of Yan Karkusov), and therefore Russia may not extradite them to South Ossetia.

However, there is an agreement according to which Russian citizens who commit crimes in the territory of South Ossetia must stand trial and serve their sentences in Russia.

At the same time, respondents of JAMnews struggled to explain why the court sentenced only one of the Karkusov brothers, Yan Karkusov, who is already serving time in a Russian prison, and not the other two, even though they were also accused of collaborating with the Georgian side, and as far as it is known, they are not serving any prison sentences anywhere.

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