In Tbilisi, a man, Rafael Mursakulov, charged for the murder of an Australian citizen Shanae Brooke Edwards last year, was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years in prison by Tbilisi City Court on Wednesday.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office of Georgia, the victim, Brooke Edwards, had been stabbed with a knife at least 13 times, including five cuts in the throat (pharynx) area.
Prosecutor Giorgi Kobuladze explained that after committing the crime, the accused covered Brooke Edwards’ body with leaves in an attempt to hide it from the people and police.
Moreover, Tyson Edwards, the brother of the deceased Shanae Brooke Edwards, attended the court hearings and said his family members demanded a life sentence for the accused.
Mursakulov, the murderer of the Australian Citizen, apologized to the brother of the victim for his violent act, saying he “was not that kind of person, just got into that situation.”
Furthermore, Shanae Brooke Edwards was an English teacher who had moved to Georgia just 2 years before her death.
As per the reports, she went missing while on hiking in the afternoon of July 30 and was found dead the following day.
After receiving a call from the public about the dead body, the police arrested Mursakulov on September 8. More than 200 individuals have been questioned, and DNA samples of the suspect have been sent to 194 foreign states for examination.
Mursakulov was charged with armed robbery and deliberate homicide, which is punishable by 16-20 years in prison or a life sentence. He was a 33-year-old man.
To transfer the victim’s body to her home country, the Georgian government covered all the expenses.
Earlier in September, the interior ministry did not say whether Brooke Edwards was raped before her death, but the Deputy Head of Tbilisi police department Kakha Muradashvili said at the press briefing that “the body of a woman was found with traces of violence”.
