Tbilisi City Court has sentenced 26-year-old Anri Kvaratskhelia to four years and six months in prison for allegedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at a police officer.
Kvaratskhelia, who was detained in early December, was sentenced on Thursday morning.
Several Georgian media outlets noted that no police officer involved in his case appeared to have sustained any physical injuries.
According to Civil.ge, Kvaratskhelia’s defence had challenged the allegations, pointing to a lack of evidence and a forensic report and stating that it was impossible to identify the person who had allegedly thrown the Molotov cocktail.
Kvaratskhelia was arrested during a raid on his home on 5 December 2024, one week into the ongoing protests against the Georgian government’s decision to suspend the country’s EU membership bid.
In an interview with RFE/RL, Kvaratskhelia’s wife, Nutsa Eremniani, described the raid as traumatising, and that she had suffered a miscarriage shortly afterwards.
Civil.ge went on to note that the Prosecutor’s Office based the charges against Kvaratskehlia on two videos: the first showing him, with his face blurred, showing his middle fingers, presumably at the police, during a protest. The second shows a man igniting what appears to be a Molotov cocktail and throwing it near the riot police.
Kvaratskhelia’s defence team has not contested that their client appeared in the first video, but argued that it was impossible to identify the man in the second.
The outlet additionally reported that two riot police officers, Nika Chavleishvili and Simon Gambashidze, testified against Kvaratskhelia in court, saying the Molotov cocktail landed ‘some three to four metres from them’, but denying that they had been injured and noting that they were unable to identify the man who had thrown the petrol bomb at them.
In his closing speech before his verdict was delivered, Kvaratskhelia dismissed the charges pressed against him, stressing that he was proud to have ‘stood by [his] country’.
‘Thank you very much for being so concerned and attending my hearings. It doesn’t really matter to me what years you sentence me to, Mr Judge, because I am very proud to have stood by my country’, he said, according to Publika.
‘Once again, thank you very much for standing by my side. Take care of my mother, considering that she’s an immigrant. When she arrives, give my warmest regards to her. Be well, we will see each other soon. We are one big family.’
Mikheil Gvadzabia
