Georgian authorities have jailed opposition leaders Mamuka Khazardze and Badri Japaridze for eight months and Zurab Japaridze for seven, for failing to appear before a Georgian Dream’s parliamentary commission investigating the opposition.
Zurab Japaridze, who leads the Girchi — More Freedom party were sentenced by Tbilisi City Court on Monday morning. Khazardze and Badri Japaridze (no relation to Zurab), the leaders of Lelo, were sentenced later that day.
All three were also barred from holding public office for two years.
The three are the first to be sentenced amongst several opposition politicians facing criminal charges on the same grounds. Three other politicians — Nika Melia, Nika Gvaramia, and Irakli Okruashvili — remain in pre-trial detention, while another, Giorgi Vashadze, is out on bail.
Zurab Japaridze, who was already in pre-trial custody for refusing to pay bail, did not attend his hearing. His party dismissed the verdict as a ‘circus that’s being called a court’.
Khazardze and Badri Japaridze also declined to attend the trial, spending the day with family, supporters, and journalists at the Lelo party headquarters in Tbilisi.
A heavy police presence was deployed to their offices on Monday evening to facilitate their arrest.
The two remained defiant as police led them away.
‘Fire to the oligarchy; Bidzina’s Russian regime will fall very soon’, Khazaradze said, referring to Georgian Dream founder Bidzina Ivanishvili. ‘Georgia will win’, Badri Japaridze said.
Reacting to the verdicts outside the Lelo office, Georgia’s fifth president, Salome Zourabichvili, said the scale of the repression was a ‘sign of weakness’ from the government. ‘This is the beginning of the end, the regime is at the point where nothing will save it. Our answer to repression will be a united plan’, she said.
Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, who has repeatedly vowed to outlaw the opposition, attributed the verdicts to the three being ‘agents’ of the ‘deep state’.
‘These people were brought to this situation by the deep state. They [the deep state] are not interested in the fate of their agents, they don’t care if their agent is in or out of prison, or what their political fate will be’, he said. ‘When you are an agent of the deep state, you should agree on terms that if they force you to violate law, violate the constitution, you may go to prison for that’.
Since early 2022, the ruling Georgian Dream party has espoused a conspiracy theory that a ‘global war party’, now referred to as the ‘deep state’ has been controlling events in the US and the EU and attempting to undermine their rule in Georgia.
The anti-UNM commission
The commission was set up in February ostensibly to investigate the United National Movement’s (UNM) time in power, following repeated pledges by Georgian Dream to punish the formerly ruling party.
Initially, its mandate was limited to the UNM’s years in government (2003–2012), but it was later expanded to cover the period up to the present day — effectively giving Georgian Dream free reign to target virtually any opposition figure.
Like Japaridze, numerous other opposition figures have also boycotted the commission, refusing to recognise its legitimacy, as well as that of the current parliament, which has also been boycotted by major opposition parties following the disputed 2024 parliamentary elections.
Criminal cases were launched against those who refused to attend the commission’s hearings, and if found guilty, those charged could be fined or sentenced to up to a year in prison. They would also be banned from holding public office or engaging in certain activities for up to three years.
Two other opposition representatives, the leaders of the Ahali party, Melia and Gvaramia, have also been detained for refusing to pay bail for not appearing before the commission, but have yet to be sentenced. Former Defence Minister Okruashvili was also detained on similar charges.
Georgian Dream has openly declared that it intends to use the findings of the parliamentary commission to file a case with the Constitutional Court seeking to ban the country’s main opposition parties — a promise the ruling party made to its voters ahead of the 2024 elections.
The ruling party maintained that all major opposition groups operating in the country are satellites of the UNM and should no longer be allowed to exist.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
