21 year old girl raped by "soldiers" (eye-witness reports)

Elene Gelashvili, 21 years old, is a refugee from the village of Nikozi:

“When the fighting started in Cxinvali, we all took shelter in the cellars of our houses…our house wasn’t hit by a bomb, but there were dead and wounded all over the place. We couldn’t stay there any longer and decided to walk by foot towards Gori. On the road a driver picked us up and took us to Gori with his minibus.

He told the young girl to cover their heads with a veil and act as if you were elderly people, the Russians and Ossetians are everywhere, they are stopping cars and if they like some girl, they take her right away. “Act, as if you were old women!” My friend Mari said, “What a nonsense, how should they take us away”; we implored her, but she was such a hard-head….

We hadn’t even passed a kilometre, when we were stopped by 30 armed Russians. A skinny guy put is head into the minibus, saw Mari and pulled her out of the car. All in all there were three men in the bus, which they started to beat with their guns. Then they told the driver to drive on, I still have Maris pale face on my mind….

Two days later we were still in Gori but planned to go to Tbilisi, when we heard of a girl, that had been tortured by soldiers; I couldn’t breathe anymore…….I said to myself “if that would really be Mari, she´d be alive at least. I asked some soldiers for her and when I finally found her I hardly recognised her….she had blood all over and was in a terrible state. They had taken her to a village near Cxinvali and about 50 men had raped her there. Then they had put her on drugs and mutilated her. She begged them to kill her…..

Aliko Guliashvili, 75 years old, refugee the village of Eredvi:

It´s hard for me to speak about those things, but I have to, cause all have to know how inhuman and sadistic these Russians are. Take them to court, I beg you…..

My wife has died when she gave birth to our twins, I raised our twins alone, after that also my grandchildren. When this horrible war started Ani was 17, Levan 15. Levan was torn into pieces in front of my eyes by a bomb, his body has been separated from the legs. Ani was taken to a house by soldiers, those murderers, I could hear hear wailing and moaning, but coudn´t do anything about it; I was lying on the ground, after they had beaten me up….

And those pigs still weren’t satisfied with raping her, they told her: “Run, if you make it away from here within 10 seconds, you´ll be free. The deafened and weeping child ran away and was shot by them when they hadn´t even count to three. My dear grandchild sank down immediately…….