Plot to kill a “high-ranking clergyman” investigated in Georgia

Head of Georgian Patriarchate’s property management service Giorgi Mamaladze has been arrested on charges of plotting to poison “a high-ranking member of clergy”, the country’s prosecutor general Irakli Shotadze told journalists Monday, February 13.

He said Father Giorgi Mamaladze had been detained in the Tbilisi airport as he was about to board a Berlin-bound flight on February 10. A package containing cyanide was found on him. A search of his house is said to have yielded a gun and six bullets.

Prosecutor general’s office says it acted on a tip from a man who said Mamaladze had asked him to help get cyanide and promising to pay for it.

Mamaladze has been charged with attempted murder – a charge he himself has denied – and faces 7 to 15 years in prison if convicted.

On February 12, TV channel Rustavi-2 linked Mamaladze’s arrest to an attempt to poison head of the Georgian Christian Orthodox Church Illia II.

The latter is currently in Germany, having just undergone a gallbladder surgery in the Helios hospital in Berlin. The operation, conducted on Monday, was successful, and the 84-year-old Patriarch feels OK, Georgian media report, citing his German doctors.