Fred Woodrough, of the US Embassy to Georgia, was murdered in Tbilisi, August 8, 1993. Georgia's Supreme Court has satisfied an application filed by the top prosecutor's experts and the convict's lawyers, report court PR.
Anzor Sharmaidze was convicted to a 15-year term for the murder. The victim's relations hired an American lawyer, one Michael Pular. He secured the case reopened, November last, and demanded the convict released. The Woodrough family regards Sharmaidze as innocently languishing in jail for twelve years now. Tamaz Inaishvili of Georgia has been appointed attorney for the defense.
Fred Woodrough, who eventually turned out a CIA man, met his death as he, Eldar Gogoladze-the Georgian President's chief bodyguard, and two girls were returning to Tbilisi from picnic by a Niva car. As the investigators and the victim's companions had it, several army-uniformed young men apprehended the car at the city entrance, and demanded to stop. Gogoladze, who was driving, did not obey. A single shot came off that instant. Woodrough, who was in the back seat, got a bullet through his head, and died half an hour later. Gogoladze promptly took the dying man to hospital and darted back to the site, where he detained Anzor Sharmaidze and another two men.
Once in the police precinct, the men said it was Sharmaidze who had shot the fatal bullet. He confessed, and was sentenced to a 15-year prison term. Later on, the convict said he had been third-degreed into confession.
The case was independently investigated in the United States. A greater part of the file remains classified to this day as it involves a sensational spying case-two weeks before his death, Woodrough met in Tbilisi with Ames, prominent CIA officer, who was soonexposed as Russian agent and sentenced to life imprisonment in his country.
As American detectives found, Anzor Sharmaidze was certainly innocent. He even was not on the murder site at the time.
