Georgian poet Zviad Ratiani faces up to 7 years in jail for ‘slapping a police officer’
Georgian poet Zviad Ratiani has been remanded into pretrial custody on charges of slapping a police officer during a protest. If found guilty, he could face up to seven years in prison.
Ratiani was arrested on Monday during an anti-government protest outside parliament.
His lawyer, Mariam Pataridze, said prosecutors accused him of slapping the chief of the Didube–Chughureti Patrol Police Department, Teimuraz Mishveladze. The criminal charges of attacking a police officer Ratiani faces carry a prison sentence of up to seven years.
‘Criminal charges and from four to seven years for slapping or hitting someone is a cruel treatment, but unfortunately Georgian Dream got us accustomed to it’, Lekso Ratiani, Zviad Ratiani’s son, told journalists outside Tbilisi City Court before Wednesday’s hearing.
‘They were particularly targeting Zviad since November, and before that too. Of course, he was fighting till the end and I am sure no one liked him in our ruling party’.
Ratiani has been an active participant in the ongoing daily protests against the government which began in late November against the government’s decision to freeze Georgia’s EU membership bid.
On 29 November he was detained for petty hooliganism and disobeying police and was reportedly severely beaten after the arrest, as result of which he suffered a broken rib, broken nose, and other injuries. He was given eight days of administrative detention as a result.
Ratiani is the second person to have been detained on charges of slapping a high-ranking police officer since the beginning of the protests — the first being Mzia Amaghlobeli, the founder of media outlets Netgazeti and Batumelebi.
Amaghlobeli had slapped Batumi Police Chief Irakli Dgebuadze in January, leading to her immediate imprisonment.
Numerous independent media and civil society representatives have described Amaghlobeli’s arrest as a premeditated provocation, pointing out that just moments earlier, some of her acquaintances had also been unexpectedly detained at the same location, and that Dgebuadze had verbally insulted her.
Both within Georgia and internationally, independent journalists and human rights defenders, as well as diplomats and politicians, have called for Amaghlobeli’s immediate release, pointing out the disproportionate nature of the charges against her.
OC Media
