Georgian court sentences 19-year-old to 4.5 years in prison for ‘attacking a police officer’ during a protest
Tbilisi City Court Judge Tamar Mchedlidze has sentenced Saba Jikia, a 19-year-old participant of anti-government protests, to four years and six months in jail for ‘attacking a police officer’. Jikidze never pleaded guilty and has maintained his innocence.
Jikidze was arrested on 5 December on charges of ‘hitting a police officer’ with his leg during a protest on 30 November.
The victim in this case is an employee of special operative department Beka Gotiashvili, who during the trial stated that he did not receive any injuries.
During the last hearing on 10 July, Jikia delivered his final words. Following the new media ban implemented by the ruling Georgian Dream party, the media is not allowed to record video, audio, or photo during trials. Nonetheless, photos of his handwritten speech were later posted on social media.
‘I am not really happy about the fact that I will have to go to prison from four to seven years with absurd charges and that I have to spend my youth in jail, but my arrest had some positive results as well, I got to know amazing boys, I learned the price of freedom, what situation our country is in and the best part is that I will have amazing stories to tell my grandchildren. I will not be ashamed to tell them, because we stand on the right side of history’, he said in his letter.
Jikia added that he kept coming to court to meet his friends and supporters.
‘To show you that we are not afraid and we didn’t break. But I still have inner fear. I am scared of defeat, because I don’t want future generations to judge us for this defeat’, he said.
‘I am scared of the defeat because I don’t want kids to be raised in an unjust country and a dictatorship. So I will do however I can, I will fight till the end. It is weird to hear this from a 19-year-old boy, but this is how it is, my friends. I won’t give up’.
In its coverage of the verdict, the pro-government media outlet TV Imedi, wrote that Jikia had been convicted of ‘attacking a police officer with a knife’ despite the fact that a knife was never a subject of discussion during Jikia’s trial.
Post TV, another pro-government media outlet, published a post with an apparently AI-generated, Studio Ghibli-style anime depiction of Jikia holding a knife as other protesters beat up police in the background. An attached caption read, ‘prisoner of conscience for opposition, violent criminal Saba Jikia in reality’.
Journalists said that Judge Mchedlidze’s announcement of the verdict was met by sadness and tears from his friends and supporters.
Jikia’s lawyer, Guja Avsajanishvili, told journalists after the announcement that Mchedlidze had already prepared the verdict in advance, as the amount of time she took to make a ruling would not have been enough to write the text she read to the court.
‘This means that Mrs Tamar came to the final speech with an already written verdict. This means that the judges come to trials with their attitudes formed already’, he said.
Apart from Jikidze, Tbilisi City Court sentenced two other protesters, Mate Devidze and Giorgi Mindadze, for ‘attacking a police officer’. Devidze was sentenced to four years and six months, while Mindadze to five years in jail.
