Tamar Mearakishvili, an ethnic Georgian activist and journalist who was recently detained in South Ossetia on 'espionage' charges, has been released back into Georgian-controlled territory.
The Georgian State Security Service (SSG) confirmed to OC Media on Wednesday that Mearakishvili was ‘free and in the territory controlled by the central government’.
The South Ossetian Prosecutor General’s Office also commented, saying that Mearakishvili was ‘expelled from the Republic of South Ossetia’.
Reports first emerged on 22 December that friends were no longer able to reach Mearakishvili, who is originally from South Ossetia’s Akhalgori (Leningor) and currently lives in Tskhinvali (Tskhinval).
According to Caucasian Knot, the activist had informed her friends by phone that unknown individuals had entered her Tskhinvali apartment via the balcony, after which all contact was lost.
Earlier, Mearakishvili spoke with a Caucasian Knot correspondent too, telling them that security forces were present near her home, knocking for a long time on her door and those of her neighbours.
‘I’m not home right now; friends who came to see me told me so’, Mearakishvili told the publication.
The following morning, on 23 December, the South Ossetian Prosecutor General’s Office and security services began releasing information that apparently referred to Mearakishvili’s detention.
According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, a ‘Georgian citizen residing in South Ossetia’ collected and transmitted information about ‘strategically important facilities in the republic, thereby endangering the country’s security’.
‘Currently, the mentioned defendant has been detained, and the investigation is identifying other persons involved in the crime’, the agency said, without specifying on whose behalf the detainee allegedly engaged in ‘espionage’.
The statement was issued almost simultaneously with reports that contact with the activist had been lost.
Later, South Ossetian state-run media outlet RES published a comment from the press service of the local security service (KGB), stating that the female detainee was a ‘resident of the village of Leningor’ and was charged with ‘transmitting information to foreign media outlets affiliated with Georgian intelligence services’.
‘The media used the citizen in propaganda efforts to promote the interests of Georgia and its Western partners’, the report read.
In neither case was the detainee identified by name.
Shortly before her detention, on Monday, Mearakishvili announced on Facebook that she would begin a hunger strike if South Ossetian Parliamentary Speaker Alan Margiev did not meet with her, noting that she had been trying to see him for over a year.
‘Starting tomorrow I am forced to start a hunger strike, because of the arbitrariness of the government, complete disregard of the civil service law, labour law, and the violation of my rights. My protest is also aimed at the scale of the embezzlement of budget funds in my district’, she wrote, personally addressing Margiev with the words, ‘I appeal to you, find the time to receive me today’.
On 30 December, the local SAPA news agency reported that Mearakishvili had been hospitalised due to her hunger strike, citing her lawyer Alan Bazzaev.
‘Her mood is normal, but she is experiencing severe weakness’, Mearakishvili’s lawyer told SAPA, adding that despite her deteriorating health, she refused to end her hunger strike. He further noted that she had lost around 10 kilogrammes since her detention, and had recently switched to a dry hunger strike, refusing both food and water.
Mearakishvili has a long history of activism and journalistic work. She has consistently criticised South Ossetian authorities over corruption, human rights violations, and socio-economic policies.
Akhalgori District, where Mearakishvili is from, is mostly populated by ethnic Georgians who require documents issued both by Georgian and South Ossetian authorities to cross over to Georgia-controlled territory and back.
In recent years, Mearakishvili has spent much of her time in an exhausting struggle with local security structures, marked by criminal investigations against her, detention, the confiscation of personal documents, and restrictions on her freedom of movement.
Criminal proceedings against Mearakishvili began in 2017 on charges of defamation of a local politician, as well as of obtaining South Ossetian citizenship using forged documents. In August of that year, the activist was briefly detained, her house was searched and documents confiscated.
‘A decision was probably made from above to punish me. They probably thought that I wouldn’t be strong enough to go through this. They would underline the fact that I am a woman, that they managed to break men and I wouldn’t survive’, she later told OC Media while discussing the events.
In the years that followed, Mearakishvili won several court cases. In 2022, prosecutors decided to discontinue the investigation on statute-of-limitations grounds, a decision Mearakishvili rejected and challenged in court. She stressed that the charges against her should not be dropped due to limitation periods, but rather that the Prosecutor General’s Office should explicitly acknowledge that she had not committed any crime.
At the end of 2022, prosecutors terminated the investigation on all counts due to the absence of a criminal activity.
Despite the charges being dropped, Mearakishvili continued to face restrictions on her freedom of movement until recently. In an article published by Netgazeti in September 2025, she said the prosecutor’s office had returned her passport only after it had expired, and that two years after applying for a new one, her request still had not been approved.
In addition to criticising South Ossetian officials, Mearakishvili also spoke out against representatives of Georgia’s central government, highlighting their insufficient efforts regarding her case and more.
Following reports of the latest detention, human rights defenders in Tbilisi urged the Georgian authorities to pay attention to Mearakishvili’s case and ensure her immediate release.
For ease of reading, we choose not to use qualifiers such as ‘de facto’, ‘unrecognised’, or ‘partially recognised’ when discussing institutions or political positions within Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia. This does not imply a position on their status.
Mikheil Gvadzabia
