Georgian opposition leader Khoshtaria says she was ‘assaulted and stripped naked’ during detention

According to a post on Facebook shared on Elene Khoshtaria’s official account, one of the leaders of the opposition group Coalition for Change, she was stripped naked in Tbilisi’s temporary detention centre and assaulted after being detained at a demonstration.

‘After the detention, at the police station [...] police officers Nino Chkhartishvili and Davit Bolotashvili, after I refused to cooperate, handcuffed me tightly behind my back. Then Nino Chkhartishvili and Davit Bolotashvili inflicted injuries on my jaws and teeth’, the Facebook post read, citing a letter Koshtaria wrote while still in detention.

According to her, an ‘even more insulting episode occurred in Dighomi, in a temporary detention centre’.

‘Again against my will, my hands were tied behind my back by a police brigade called in. I was held by two police officers (Nino Chkhartishvili, Salome Lashkhia and one more) who wrestled me and completely stripped me’.

‘This practice of forced stripping is a shameful Russian method of violating human dignity and inflicting physical violence on them’, the post read.

Khoshtaria was detained during an anti-government protest outside the parliament building on Friday.

The demonstration, which was part of a series of protests that began in November, was also influenced by an investigative commission in the ruling parliament, where senior military officials involved in the 2008 August War were questioned.

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The Interior Ministry claimed on Saturday that Khoshtaria was subject to procedures stipulated by law, and ‘while undergoing the procedures, Elene Khoshtaria violated the internal regulations of the isolator, namely, she refused to fully undergo the procedures prescribed by the placement law and behaved aggressively’.

The ministry also alleged that ‘the detainee was allegedly found with an illegal substance, which has been ordered for appropriate examination’, without specifically saying what they meant .

Nika Gvaramia, co-founder and leader of the Coalition for Change, told TV Pirveli that police ‘stripped Elene completely naked, tied her hands behind her back, and made her lie naked on a regular bed in a regular room for quite some time, holding a metal detector over her naked body for a long time’.

‘As for the medicine — Elene’s health has not been perfect in recent years, she always has a lot of medicine with her and they didn’t give her these medicines either. She had a blood pressure crisis several times, when they brought her in she had a blood pressure crisis and at that time her gag reflex was triggered and they told her not to go to the toilet — they will bring you a bag and don’t throw it up here’, he said.

‘After that she asked for a regulator from her medicine, but they didn’t give it to her’.

‘As soon as this [vomiting] stopped, they undressed her and did what I told you they did [to her] with a detector’.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Party protested the detention and ‘appalling treatment’ of Khoshtaria.

‘Another outrageous case of the Georgian Dream regime’s treatment of the unlawfully imprisoned. Our members will continue to fight for democracy and a European future for Georgia’, the group said in a statement.

US Representative Joe Wilson, who is also the co-chair of the Helsinki Commission and initiator of the MEGOBARI Act, also published a statement, saying that ‘key Georgian opposition leader Elene Khoshtaria has been wrongfully detained by the cowardly anti-American [Bidzina] Ivanishvili regime’.

‘She and ALL political prisoners must be IMMEDIATELY released. Free and fair elections are the ONLY way forward’, he wrote on X.

Khoshtaria was released from pre-trial detention on Saturday evening.

After being released she told TV Pirveli that ‘we must protect our fellow citizens from police officers like this, so I speak by name and surname, and others must tell us as well’.

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The current political crisis in the country deepened when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced in late November that the government was halting Georgia’s EU bid until 2028, sparking daily mass protests during which more than 400 demonstrators were reported to have been detained thus far.

Since the protests began, law enforcement officers and unidentified masked people have assaulted a number of protesters, including tens of journalists covering the protests.

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