Lopota incident information

Lopota incident
A TV9 footage showing the Georgian police entering the Lopota Gorge
Date August 28 – October 30, 2012[1] Location Lopota, Telavi District, Kakheti, Georgia 42°6′27″N 45°39′51″E / 42.10750°N 45.66417°E / 42.10750; 45.66417 Result Georgian victory
Belligerents
Georgia	Unknown
Commanders and leaders
Vano Merabishvili	Aslan Margoshvili  † Bahaud Aldamov  † Bahaud Bagakashvili  †
Strength
Undisclosed	Estimated 17–20
Casualties and losses
3 killed, 5 wounded[2][3]	Officially 11 killed,[3] "several" wounded[4]

The Lopota incident, known in Georgia as the special operation against an illegal armed group in Lopota (Georgian: შეიარაღებული დაჯგუფების დევნის ოპერაცია ლაფანყურში, romanized: sheiaraghebuli dajgupebis devnis op’eratsia lapanq’urshi), was an armed incident where the Georgian special forces engaged an unknown paramilitary group of about 17 unknown individuals (7 of them would later be identified after the incident, see the Identities section) which had allegedly taken several people hostage in the remote Caucasus gorge of Lopota near the border between Georgia and the Russia's Republic of Dagestan.

At first, the gunmen were widely believed to be Russian Islamist insurgents from Dagestan, however several other theories suggest that they may be local Islamist militants from the Pankisi Gorge.

To this day, there is no definitive answer to the paramilitary group's identity, and the likelihood of their identity has remained classified by Georgian officials.

During the operation, which began on August 28, 2012, at least 14 people were killed and at least six wounded in a firefight on August 29. Among the victims were 11 members of the unknown armed group (including at least two Georgian citizens as well as at least five Russian citizens, all of the latter born in the former Chechen–Ingush ASSR).

Three Georgian special service personnel were killed and five were injured. On September 8, an injured suspected militant, Akhmed Chatayev, a Russian citizen of Chechen ethnicity holding a refugee status in Austria, was arrested. Chatayev was put on trial for illegal weapon possession but protests his innocence, saying he was actually a negotiator for the government and that he was carrying no arms; he was later acquitted. The operation was officially concluded on October 30.

Many details of the clash, the most deadly in Georgia since the 2008 South Ossetia war, still remain unclear. The governments of both Georgia and Russia, as well as Russia's Islamic insurgents of the Caucasus Emirate that abortively claimed that the unidentified armed group belonged to their main forces in Dagestan, accused each other of a provocation.

The incident was also lambasted by Georgian then-opposition (winner of the October 2012 election) coalition Georgian Dream, who accused Saakashvili's United National Movement government of lying about it and promised that those responsible for the deaths would be punished.