Career
Born in the village of Khovle (Kaspi district), Kurashvili began his career in the Soviet military in 1968 and retired with the rank of a colonel in February 1992. The same year he returned to Georgia and joined the Georgian military, being appointed a commander of an Interior Troops brigade. In September 1993, he was among the last defenders of Sukhumi.
In the mid-1990s, he served as Deputy Defense Minister and commander of the Georgian Land Forces.
In May 1998, he was again involved in Abkhazia, during the brief War in Abkhazia (1998) in Gali District. On 22–24 May 1999, Kurashvili and nine other people were arrested over accusations of plotting to assassinate President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze and seize power in the country.
The trial opened at the Supreme Court of Georgia in April 2001. The Georgian authorities claimed that former security minister, Igor Giorgadze, wanted for involvement in the failed 1995 assassination attempt against Shevardnadze, was behind the plot.
Shevardnadze himself stated that the plot was masterminded in Russia to thwart Georgia"s rapprochement with the West and intended to eliminate the country"s entire leadership.
Kurashvili denied the involvement, claiming that the charges were trumped-up to get rid of the witness of the "treacherous mistakes" of the Georgian leadership in the conflict of Abkhazia. In 2002, Kurashvili was pardoned by Shevardnadze. Kurashvili, Panjikidze, and Kantaria appealed to the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled, on 27 October 2009, that Georgia had breached the Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to a fair trial) and imposed the state of Georgia to pay EUR 2.000 to the three men for non-pecuniary damage.