Relief worker charged with vehicular manslaughter awaits trial

c. 1999 Religion News Service TBILISI, Georgia _ An American Catholic Relief Services worker facing charges of vehicular manslaughter believes this week’s papal visit to this former Soviet republic may help his case.”I work for a Catholic organization and I would hope that it would be brought to his attention,”said Loren Wille, 54, of Golden, […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

TBILISI, Georgia _ An American Catholic Relief Services worker facing charges of vehicular manslaughter believes this week’s papal visit to this former Soviet republic may help his case.”I work for a Catholic organization and I would hope that it would be brought to his attention,”said Loren Wille, 54, of Golden, Colo., who was driving in a traffic accident this summer that killed his friend and translator.

Wille made his comments during Pope John Paul II’s two-day visit to the Georgian capital, which ended Tuesday (Nov. 9). The pope, in his first-ever trip to the Caucasus, met with President Eduard Shevardnadze and other political and religious leaders.


During the pontiff’s 30 hours in Tbilisi, a former Vatican diplomat working for Catholic Relief Services on Wille’s case lobbied visiting hierarchs and local officials, Wille said.”Archbishop Tom White is meeting with, maybe not the pope, but with cardinals and as many top government officials as he can who are joining the entourage,”said Wille in an interview from a Tbilisi hospital where he is being treated for injuries sustained in the July 21 wreck.

If convicted of vehicular manslaughter for the death of his friend, Manana Tsomashvili, Wille faces up to 10 years in prison. Opening arguments in the case are set to be heard Nov. 15, according to Wille’s lawyer, Ivan Khokhlov,who expects the trial to last a week.

For his part, Khokhlov played down the significance of the pontiff’s visit.”I don’t see any connection,”said Khokhlov, a U.S.-trained lawyer retained by Catholic Relief Services.

Khokhlov did, however, say that the results of recent parliamentary elections in Georgia bode well for his client getting an impartial trial.”The balance of power has pretty much remained the same,”he said.

However, in the run-up to the Oct. 31 elections, Georgia’s second most powerful leader, parliament chairman Zurab Zhvania, was quoted by Georgian papers as saying,”If they want to link U.S.-Georgian relations and $95 million in aid with one drunk American, let them take their help away.” Zhvania, a member of the Citizens’ Union of Georgia, was referring erroneously to the amount of U.S. aid reputed to be at stake if Wille were to be imprisoned, and to rumors that Wille was driving while intoxicated.

Wille has not been charged with drunken driving and vehemently denies having consumed any alcohol before the crash.”I was not speeding. I was not drunk. I was not negligent. But they have manufactured enough evidence for me to be here this long,”said Wille, lying propped on a pillow in a hospital bed where he is being treated for injuries to his lungs and collarbone.

Although the accident occurred in a Georgian province, Wille’s lawyer successfully pleaded for a change of venue. Khokhlov said one reason for the change of venue was”violations of due process”by initial investigators.


Wille, for example, was interrogated immediately following the accident without a lawyer present and after just having been given a dose of morphine for his injuries.

Weeks later his sister, Margaret Wille, visited him from Iowa.”Loren was just terrified. I came to him in the hospital and I could feel it immediately. His body was quivering. The tears started streaming. You could just feel the tension,”she recalled in a telephone interview.”There are parts of the government which he truly fears.” Local investigators equated Wille’s predicament with that of Georgy Makharadze, a Georgian diplomat convicted of killing a Washington, D.C., pedestrian while driving drunk in the U.S. capital. Makharadze is currently in a North Carolina prison.”We were told by the investigators that it is `payback time’ for the Makharadze case,”Khokhlov said.

The case now has a new Tbilisi investigator, Georgy Budzishvili, who declined to comment on Khokhlov’s allegations.

Despite all that has happened, Wille said he is eager to return to his position working on a CRS shelter construction project in Stepanakert, Karabakh, an Armenian enclave that broke away from the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.”Someday,”Wille said, when he has recovered psychologically from the ordeal, he vows to return to Georgia.”I love this country and I love the people. Why should it happen like this? I lost a very good friend. To compound that, they are threatening me with from three to 10 years in prison.” AMB END BROWN

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