Tbilisi. IDFI expressed interested in the Ortachala Prison archive as early as in 2013. 

''The organization requested clarification from National Archives of Georgia, the Ministry of Justice, and the Ministry of Corrections. The Ministry of Justice responded by forwarding the mail to the Ministry of Corrections, and National Archives stated that documentation was not kept in their system. 

IDFI discovered that the archive was in a precarious state. During the transportation of the archive, no classification and cataloging was done. The documents were placed in the basement, some in bags, some without. Most of the files simply sat on the floor under grave danger of destruction in the damp basement. Many of these files were already unrecoverable. 

To save the archive, IDFI offered cooperation to the Ministry of Corrections. The organization facilitated communication between the Archive of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, National Archives of Georgia, and the Ministry of Corrections to share experience about modernizing archives. Several work meetings were convened to plan rehabilitation of the archive, transporting documents to a safe area, and cataloging them properly'', is noted in the statement. 

Source: idfi.ge