Timur Borchashvili, a Georgian of Chechen ethnicity who has been denied asylum in the Czech Republic twice, does not want to apply for the asylum again as he is afraid of imprisonment, Czech senator Jaromir Stetina told Czech News Agency (CTK) on Tuesday, February 23.

Borchashvili is afraid that even his new evidence on his participation in the Chechen resistance movement would be considered irrelevant, said Stetina who helps the man hide on Czech soil.

Timur Borchashvili was to leave the Czech Republic by February 7, which he did not, and went into hiding.

Czech senator Jaromir Stetina said he will ask Interior Minister Martin Pecina to extend Borchashvili’s visa until an appeals court deals with his protest against not being granted asylum in the Czech Republic.

At today’s meeting of a Senate commission on democracy promotion, representatives of the Interior Ministry and Czech office of the Amnesty International organisation recommended to Borchashvili to submit a new application for asylum.

Senator Jaromir Stetina said Borchashvili would like to have a guarantee that he would not end up in prison again.

Tomas Haisman, head of the ministry asylum and migration policy department of Czech Republic, said no such guarantee would be given as this is not done.

He said Borchashvili was not in prison but in a facility for the detention of foreigners because he was arrested when trying to illegally cross the Czech border to Austria.

Borchashvili originally did not apply for asylum in the Czech Republic, Haisman said. He said Borchashvili arrived in the Czech Republic using his brother’s passport and he used his brother’s identity when he applied for asylum but he was then changing his story.

Tomas Haisman said Borchashvili would probably be sent to the detention facility again for marring the decision on his extradition.

Senator Jaromir Stetina said it is no wonder that Borchashvili used the identity of somebody else as he had cooperated with the Chechen government of Aslan Maskhadov who was killed in a shoot-out with Russian occupying forces in March 2005.

If extradited, Russian or pro-Kremlin Chechen authorities or secret services would pose a serious danger to Borchashvili, Stetina said.