Batumi City Court has postponed the verdict for Mzia Amaghlobeli, the jailed director of Batumelebi and Netgazeti, until 6 August. She faces up to seven years in prison on charges of ‘assaulting a police officer’.
During Monday’s hearing, Amaghlobeli delivered her final statement, and it was widely expected that Judge Nino Sakhelashvili would announce the verdict the same day.
‘There is no logic in this behaviour, I can't explain it’, Batumelebi’s editor-in-chief Eter Turadze told OC Media, commenting on the delay.
‘As our lawyer Maia Mtsariashvili says, it seems the court is struggling with the weight of the [verdict]. I hope they act reasonably and release Mzia’, she added.
The Georgian media founder was first detained at night on 11 January after putting a sticker calling for a nationwide strike on a fence outside a police station in Batumi. She had done so in protest against the detention of her colleague, Tsiala Katamidze, for putting up the same sticker on the same street.
Shortly after being released, she was again arrested for slapping Batumi Police Chief Irakli Dgebuadze during a heated exchange outside the police station.
Throughout the court proceedings, Amaghlobeli spoke about the circumstances leading up to the incident, including degrading treatment by the police, as well as the abuse she faced following her arrest after slapping the officer. This included being spat on in the face by Dgebuadze, subjected to verbal abuse, and being denied access to a toilet.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
Amaghlobeli’s case has been widely condemned by critics both in Georgia and abroad as politically motivated, linked to her work as a media personality.
Many have raised concerns about the disproportionality of the punishment, with Batumelebi referencing several past cases from the archives in which Georgia’s Supreme Court did not classify even severe physical attacks on police officers as ‘assaulting a police officer’, handing down much lighter sentences instead.
As in previous hearings, friends, colleagues, and other supporters of Amaghlobeli gathered outside the Batumi Court, holding banners reading ‘Freedom for Mzia’ and ‘Freedom for political prisoners’.
Georgia’s former president, Salome Zourabichvili, also attended the hearing, as she had on Friday.
Supporters cheered and applauded as Amaghlobeli was driven away from the court by prison transport officers. She was once again returned to the women’s prison in Rustavi, a city near Tbilisi, nearly six hours away from Batumi.
The media founder’s supporters later held a march to Batumelebi's office, where they expressed solidarity with the outlet and its founder, before concluding the protest outside the Constitutional Court building in Batumi.
‘I consider myself a winner’
Mzia Amaghlobeli began her closing statement by thanking her supporters, then went on to comment on reports that the Tbilisi City Court had ordered a 20-day involuntary psychiatric evaluation for detained activist Nino Datashvili.
‘It’s hard for me to recall another time when the environment felt so emptied of morality’, she said, adding that Datashvili’s case had devastated her and rendered many of the points in her previously prepared closing statement insignificant.
Amaghlobeli also addressed the prosecution’s offer of a plea deal, which would require her to admit guilt in exchange for a reduced sentence. The media founder described such an arrangement as equivalent to her being ‘buried alive’.
‘My lawyers have already made my position clear: that I will not and cannot sign this plea deal for the simple reason that what happened was not an assault. Framing and packaging a slap as an act of violence is an act of malice. What kind of justice is that? I honestly don’t know.’
She emphasised that she is not avoiding responsibility, unlike Dgebuadze, whom Amaghlobeli referred to as the ‘so-called victim’.
‘I believe there is a provision in the law that appropriately corresponds to my action — a slap’, she added.
The media founder again recalled the degrading treatment she says she endured at the hands of police chief Dgebuadze following her criminal detention — including being spat on and denied access to a toilet.
‘I could never imagine that I would have to publicly repeat how [Dgebuadze] said about me, “let her piss herself”. Just imagine that’, Amaghlobeli said.
She told Judge Sakhelashvili that in order to ensure fairness in the case, all that was needed was self-respect, as well as the respect of her own profession.
‘And still, whatever decision you make, I want you to know that I consider myself a winner’, she added.
‘This verdict will not be my punishment alone. It will be yours too, dear prosecutors. It will be a professional sentence for everyone involved in this case on behalf of the state’. she said.
Amaghlobeli also noted the presence of foreign diplomats and representatives of international organisations at her hearings, saying ‘They are here to support our choice — Georgia’s European future, democracy, and freedom of speech’.
She thanked her legal team for ‘confronting the propaganda with facts’, as well as independent journalists and everyone who had expressed solidarity with her.
‘Wherever you are, remember — the voice and strength that come from you carry immense energy. It was precisely your solidarity that kept me physically alive during my hunger strike. So don’t lose faith in your power. There is still time. The fight continues, until victory!’ she told supporters, concluding her statement with the words:
‘Freedom for all political prisoners. We are not criminals’.
The veteran journalist has been imprisoned for 205 days. In the first 38 days of arrest, she went on hunger strike in protest. Her eyesight, already impaired before her arrest, deteriorated significantly, to the point where, according to her lawyer, she could only distinguish between light and dark in her left eye.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
