Badri Khvedelidze murder trial hears witness failed to identify him

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The Central Criminal Court heard that a witness had failed to identify Badri Khvedelidze from photographs. The proceedings were reported on 23 October 2015.

Badri Khvedelidze, 33, has pleaded not guilty to murder. The charge concerns the alleged murder of George Tkeshelashvili at a direct provision hostel for asylum seekers in Tralee, Co Kerry, in October 2005.

Adeyenka Sow Unmi, 45, visited Westward Court, where the accused lived, on 20 October for a haircut. He told the court that, as he left, he heard loud voices and saw a fight at the end of a corridor in the hostel.

In a statement to gardaí taken later that day, he said a man had walked towards him, away from the fight, with a knife in his hand. He told gardaí he could identify the man because he had walked directly towards him. When shown eight photographs, he identified three men but did not identify the accused as having been at the scene.

Defence counsel Kerida Naidoo SC put it to Detective Garda Brian Mackey of Tralee Garda Station that omitting this identification failure from the book of evidence was a mistake. The detective replied that it was not a mistake: the witness had also failed to identify four other people, and he had not felt the need to mention those either.

The trial was due to continue before a jury and Judge Isobel Kennedy on 27 October 2015.