Tbilisi City Court sentenced actor Giorgi ‘Bakhala’ Giorganashvili to eight years in prison on 23 January on drug charges. Giorganashvili had claimed that police had planted the drugs on him.
Giorganashvili was arrested on 29 January 2017 for ‘possession of 0.3726 grammes of buprenorphine’, an opioid used to treat opioid addiction, while travelling from western Georgia to Tbilisi.
After hearing the court’s ruling, Beka Tsikarishvili, a drug reform icon, threw a brick at the courthouse in protest, breaking a window, Liberali reports. Tsikarishvili was arrested shortly after.
The Interior Ministry has opened an investigation against him for criminal damage, hooliganism, and resisting police.
If convicted, Tsikarishvili could face up to three years in prison.
Following Giorganashvili’s arrest last year, dozens of protesters rallied to support him, after which Tbilisi City Court released him on ₾20,000 ($8,400) bail. Giorganashvili claimed at the time he was being kept illegally in custody, as ‘police had planted drugs’ on him.
The Prosecutor’s office announced on 23 January that they have launched an investigation into the allegations of police abuse of power.
A rally to support Giorganashvili was held on 13 July in Tbilisi’s Dedaena Park, where supporters urged authorities to change legislation and decriminalise drug possession.
Searches without witnesses
Drug policy activists have claimed that a rule allowing courts to place a person in jail after hearing testimony only from police, without requiring a third party to be present during a search, has to be amended.
‘As in many cases in recent months, the only witnesses [of Giorganashvili’s drug-examination] are police officers. After detaining Bakhala, they examined him at a place with no cameras, and despite Giorgi’s demand to have a third party witness during the examination, they were the only ones present’, the organisers of the rally, the White Noise Movement, a group of drug policy activists, said on 13 July.
‘War against the people’
Georgia, a country where every third prisoner is serving time for drugs, may be about to transform its strict drug policy into a far more liberal system. Activists and reformers are hoping that new legislation could change Georgia’s system away from what they call ‘the war against the people’.
A bill to decriminalise drug use has already made it to parliament. After its first hearing, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Ilia II, stressed the ‘importance of elaborating an anti-drug policy’. A number of leading figures in the government echoed the anti-drug messages in the Patriarch’s annual Christmas epistle.
‘As the country faces a demographic catastrophe, each of us has to be especially cautious and prudent in approaching this problem [drug use] in a complex way so that consequential steps are taken’, the Patriarch said in his epistle at midnight on 6 January, before Orthodox Christmas Mass.
The bill is currently on hold, as officials say there are multiple subjects they have to agree on. On 22 January, Justice Minister Tea Tsulukiani said there is no agreement on issues such as different charges for different quantities of drugs and for repeat offences.
She said that in four weeks time, ministries will present concrete details on how they think these issues should be addressed.
Parliamentary hearings around Georgia’s drug decriminalisation bill, scheduled to take off on 28 November, have been postponed. The move has prompted anger amongst the authors of the bill and drug policy activists.
According to the White Noise Movement (WNM), a group campaigning for a softer drug policy and a co-author of the bill, the authors were only notified of the postponement late evening on 27 November, and were given no explanation.
A number of parties, including non-government po
Georgia, a country where every third prisoner is serving time for drugs, may be about to transform its strict drug policy into a far more liberal system. Activists and reformers are hoping that new legislation could change Georgia’s system away from what they call ‘the war against the people’.
On 15 September 2016, a 46-year-old man slashed his own stomach outside the Georgian Government Chancellery, where dozens had gathered to protest the country’s drug policy. He claimed police had terro
Tbilisi City Court has fined Beka Tsikarishvili, who became an icon for drug reform activists in the country, with ₾2,000 ($820) for possession of 69 grammes of cannabis.
Tsikarisvhili was also banned from driving, teaching, or practicing law for the next five years, and from working in the medical and pharmaceutical sector for 10 years.
Following the verdict, Tsikarishvili posted a photo on Facebook saying ‘this is not over, time to decriminalise’].
‘I am thankful that I shared the pai
