Tbilisi City Court has sentenced Georgian opposition leader Giorgi Vashadze to seven months in prison for failing to appear before a Georgian Dream parliamentary commission investigating the opposition. He is the fourth opposition figure to be jailed on these charges in the past two days.
Vashadze did not attend the trial on Tuesday. Instead, he was informed about the decision at the office of the Strategy Aghmashenebeli party, which he leads, where he later held a press briefing calling the ruling party ‘nobodies hiding behind a police regime’.
Vashadze also stated that he was not afraid of imprisonment.
Along with the prison sentence, he was barred from holding public office for two years.
‘Unity, unity, and once again, unity! Only through unity can we accelerate victory’, he said at the briefing.
Shortly after, a group of police officers arrived and arrested Vashadze.
Previously, on Monday, the court sentenced Girchi — More Freedom leader Zurab Japaridze to seven months in prison on the same charges. Just a few hours later, Lelo leaders Mamuka Khazaradze and Badri Japaridze were also sentenced to eight months each. They were also barred from holding public office for the same term as Vashadze.
Japaridze, who had refused to pay bail in protest over the same case, was already in pre-trial detention at the time the verdict was announced. Khazaradze and Japaridze, on the other hand, had paid their bail — they were taken by police from their party office in the presence of journalists and supporters.
Ahali party leaders Nika Melia and Nika Gvaramia, as well as former MP Givi Targamadze, are also awaiting verdicts on similar charges. Melia and Gvaramia, who refused to pay bail in protest, are currently being held in pre-trial detention, in contrast to Targamadze, who paid.
On Monday, Georgia’s fifth president Salome Zourabichvili described the arrest of opposition politicians as a ‘sign of weakness’ from the government and the beginning of its end.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze once again attacked the opposition with conspiratorial rhetoric, referring to the detainees as ‘agents’ of the ‘deep state’.
On Monday, during an interview with the pro-government TV channel Rustavi 2, the commission chair, Georgian Dream MP Tea Tsulukiani, did not rule out filing a second complaint against the detained opposition politicians.
According to her, the commission has summoned Khazaradze and Gvaramia for questioning again, and if they do not participate from prison, ‘it would probably come as no surprise to anyone if we are obliged to send this second failure-to-appear case back to the Prosecutor’s Office’.
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.
Numerous opposition figures have 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 — if found guilty, those charged could be fined or sentenced to up to a year in prison. They could also be banned from holding public office or engaging in certain activities for up to three years.
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 has 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
