Interfax, Russia
Aug 14 2008

Russian rights defender compares Georgia’s actions in Tskhinvali to
Holocaust, September 11

MOSCOW Aug 14

Georgia’s military crimes in South Ossetia are comparable to Holocaust
and genocide against Armenians, Russian Public Chamber deputy and head
of the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights Alexander Brod announced
Thursday.

"This is yet another dark page in the history of the past decades.

Its barbarity and cruelty put it in one row with Holocaust, genocide
against Armenians and September 11", he told Interfax.

Brod is a member of the Public Chamber’s commission collecting
eyewitness testimony about the Georgian-Ossetian conflict.

The Moscow Bureau for Human Rights has collected more than 100
eyewitness reports, he said.

"All eyewitnesses say that Georgians who entered Tskhinvali were
exceptionally brutal and inhumane, they abused civilians, opened fire
on apartments, their tanks rolled over people," he said.

Cases of South Ossetian civilians taken hostage by Georgian servicemen
deserve a separate investigation, he said.

"Its unclear how many hostages were seized and where they are now,"
Brod said.