Giorgi Gakharia, who previously served as Georgia’s Interior Minister and Prime Minister under the ruling Georgian Dream party, has been ordered into pre-trial detention in absentia for the 2019 protest crackdown and the construction of a police checkpoint near South Ossetia. Gakharia, who is currently abroad, said he is being politically persecuted.
Tbilisi City Court Judge Davit Kurtanidze announced the decision on Thursday, thereby granting the motion filed by the Prosecutor General’s Office. For their part, the former minister’s lawyers requested that no preventive measure be imposed, arguing there were no bases for it.
The former key figure of the ruling party, now an opposition leader, is accused of severe offenses dating back to the period when he served as Interior Minister. The charges concerned the 2019 protest crackdown and the construction of a police checkpoint near South Ossetia, carrying a potential sentence of up to 13 years.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, in the first instance Gakharia committed the intentional infliction of serious injury to the health of protest participants, while in the second instance he exceeded his authority by opening a checkpoint ‘without coordination’ with the relevant agencies.
In an English-language post published on X, Gakharia himself dismissed what he called the ‘fabricated criminal charges’, describing it as part of the ‘political persecution’ carried out by the ruling Georgian Dream party.
‘For our political party — and for me personally, from exile — this marks a new stage in the struggle to preserve the European future of Georgia, a struggle that now demands the use of every available platform’, he said, he said, effectively referring to his stay abroad as ‘exile’ for what appears to be the first time.
Gakharia also argued that the move by the Prosecutor General’s Office demonstrated the correctness of his party For Georgia’s decision to take part in the October municipal elections — boycotted by many other parties — and to end the parliamentary boycott which they had launched in 2024 together with other opposition forces. These decisions led Gakharia’s critics to accuse his party of legitimising Georgian Dream’s rule and of turning itself into a systemic opposition force.
In his statement on X, the opposition leader regrettably noted that ‘both Georgia’s democratic forces and the West have collectively lost the battle against propaganda’.
‘Yet we must not lose the far more consequential fight to preserve the European idea in Georgia’, he added.
Gakharia served as Interior Minister from 2017 to 2019.
The timing of the inquiries into his past actions drew criticism from Georgian Dream’s opponents, given that the ruling party had not only praised the former minister’s work in the past but even promoted him to prime minister in September 2019.
However, the sentiment changed in February 2021, when Gakharia stepped down from the post, citing disagreements within the ruling party over whether to arrest then-United National Movement (UNM) leader Nika Melia, who had barricaded himself inside his party’s office with supporters following a court order.
That same year, Gakharia founded a new opposition party, For Georgia, which was one of four opposition groups which cleared the electoral threshold in the disputed 2024 parliamentary elections.
Gakharia reportedly left Georgia for the EU in June 2025, with his party citing meetings with representatives of Georgia’s traditional partner states on the country’s ongoing political developments, as well as efforts to secure For Georgia’s membership in the Party of European Socialists (PES).
However, there has been speculation that he may be staying abroad to avoid possible prosecution.
In a September interview with TV Pirveli, Gakharia said he had no plans to return to the country in the near future and that he has received a residence permit in Germany.
In the same interview he expressed disbelief that the Georgian Dream-led government had the ‘resources’ to arrest him, but suggested that upon his return, his political activities could be restricted.
Criminal proceedings against Gakharia are taking place against the backdrop of many Georgian opposition leaders already being imprisoned on various charges. Recently, the ruling party fulfilled its long-standing promise and requested the Constitutional Court to ban three out of four opposition parties, excluding Gakharia’s For Georgia.
Georgian Dream cited For Georgia’s recent decision to end its parliamentary boycott as a reason for its exclusion from the lawsuit.
From the ruling party’s perspective, the boycott, launched by opposition parties after the disputed 2024 parliamentary elections, constituted ‘sabotage’, while Gakharia’s party avoided potential banning by breaking from the process.
For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
