Tbilisi City Court has set respective bails of ₾1 million ($370,000) for opposition party Lelo leaders Badri Japaridze and Mamuka Khazaradze as part of the sabotage case announced earlier in November. The two are currently embroiled in an alleged sabotage case, along with six other opposition leaders.
Judge Pikria Sikturashvili announced the decision on Saturday, thereby granting the motion of the Prosecutor General’s Office. According to the Georgian Public Broadcaster (GPB), the prosecution argued that the bail would prevent the defendants from fleeing or committing a ‘new crime’.
The investigation announced by the Prosecutor General’s Office on Thursday was the latest in which the state has targeted leaders of the Georgian opposition, several of whom are already in prison on various previously filed charges.
Under the new case, opposition politicians have been charged with a range of serious offences — including attempting to carry out a coup, sabotage, and aiding hostile activities of a foreign country or a foreign organisation — with potential prison sentences ranging from two to 15 years.
Following Saturday’s court hearing, Lelo’s Badri Japaridze — who, along with Mamuka Khazaradze, was charged with sabotage, an offence carrying a prison sentence of two to four years — described the proceedings as ‘the best example of retribution against political opponents’.
‘There is absolutely no evidence, not a single witness, behind the disgraceful accusation the Prosecutor [General’s] Office has brought against me and Mamuka Khazaradze’, he added.
Most of those charged are already arrested
The case was announced against the backdrop of the ruling party’s attempts to ban most major opposition parties through a constitutional lawsuit, accusing them of anti-state activities.
The Prosecutor General’s Office accused eight politicians of running a sprawling, multi-faceted criminal scheme since 2022, allegedly spreading false information about Georgia’s ties with Russia and providing names to foreign governments that led to Western sanctions against Georgian citizens.
He claimed the same politicians later helped ‘radicalise’ and finance violent protests following the 2024 elections and the government’s suspension of EU integration efforts.
According to Prosecutor General Giorgi Gvarakidze, the combined actions of these opposition leaders aimed to overthrow the government.
The opposition widely condemned the case as fabricated and politically motivated: a characterisation rejected by the ruling party.
Alongside Lelo’s founders, those implicated in the case are Droa party leader Elene Khoshtaria and Girchi — More Freedom leader Zurab Japaridze, as well as Strategy Aghmashenebeli leader Giorgi Vashadze and co-founders of Ahali Nika Gvaramia and Nika Melia. Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s third president and founder of the ex-ruling party, the United National Movement (UNM), was also charged.
All of those named, except for Badri Japaridze and Khazaradze, are already in prison. Saakashvili was arrested back in 2021 on a series of charges, some of which have already resulted in years-long prison sentences, while most of the others received months-long jail terms in recent months for boycotting an anti-opposition parliamentary commission.
Both Lelo leaders had also been imprisoned for boycotting the commission, but they were released in September under a presidential pardon, citing the party’s participation in the municipal elections that were boycotted by many other parties.
As for Khoshtaria, she was detained in September for painting graffiti on an election poster of the Tbilisi mayor and has remained in prison since, after refusing to pay the bail imposed on her as a form of protest.
Notably absent among opposition leaders targeted in the latest case was Giorgi Gakharia, whose For Georgia party recently announced it was ending its boycott of parliament.
OC Media
