The Georgian Prosecutor’s Office has brought a new charge of contempt of court against jailed co-leader of the opposition Ahali party, Nika Melia. This is the fourth time Melia has been charged in less than a year.
Melia was previously sentenced in November 2025 to one-and-a-half years in prison for throwing water towards a judge during a court session where he stood trial. At the time, he was already serving an eight-month sentence for boycotting a parliamentary commission created to investigate the opposition. Melia is also still facing sabotage charges, which carries a prison sentence of two to four years in prison.
OC Media
On Monday, the Georgian Prosecutor’s Office reported that an investigation by the Interior Ministry had found that Melia had committed contempt of court during an administrative court hearing on 10 November 2025 by ‘verbally insulting the judge’. The charges carry a sentence of up to two years in prison.
Noting that Melia was already serving a sentence in another criminal case, the Georgian Prosecutor’s Office stated that they were petitioning the court to schedule a pre-trial hearing.
‘I believe this is the fourth charge within a year, and it appears they are trying to break Nika psychologically — to push him into despair. But they have misjudged him. Despite the injustice he has faced for years, he has not broken; on the contrary, he is more motivated and shows an even stronger determination to fight’, Melia’s lawyer, Giorgi Kondakhishvili, told TV Pirveli on Monday ahead of the official announcement by the Georgian Prosecutor’s Office.
Kondakhishvili additionally noted that he had attended the hearing in question and ‘did not observe any such incident on Nika Melia’s part’.
