We are seriously concerned at the arrest and detention of Mzia
Amaghlobeli, the founder and director of independent Georgian news
outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti who has been on hunger strike since
January 12, and call for her immediate release.
Ms. Amaghlobeli was arrested on the evening of January 11 in the city of
Batumi during protests calling for a re-run of Georgia’s disputed October
2024 election. She was arbitrarily arrested for sticking a poster on a wall
and detained for an hour before being released.
However, as Ms. Amaghlobeli was leaving the police station, further arbitrary arrests were made, including two of her relatives. During the ensuing commotion there
was an altercation between Ms. Amaghlobeli and Batumi Police Chief Irakli
Dgebuadze and Ms. Amaghlobeli slapped Mr. Dgebuadze. As noted by
Transparency International–Georgia, “it is clear that the slap was symbolic
and lacked sufficient force to cause harm”.
Ms. Amaglobeli was arrested on charges of attacking a police officer and
taken back into detention. On January 14, Batumi City Court ordered that
she be held in pretrial detention until March. We are concerned that Ms. Amaghlobeli’s detention and the severity of the charge against her, which is punishable by a mandatory prison term of between four and seven years, are a punitive response to her outlets’ reporting and a direct consequence of the authorities’ efforts to silence independent media.
Transparency International–Georgia has repeatedly noted that the use of
pretrial detention in Georgia is often politically motivated and serves not
the legitimate aims of preventive measures but rather the purpose of
influencing the accused and intimidating society as a whole. In this case,
the court’s decision was based on the prosecution’s unsupported claim
that Ms. Amaghlobeli posed a risk of flight, committing a new offense and
destroying evidence. The court ignored the requirement that detention
should only be applied in exceptional cases and that alternative
preventive measures are always preferred.
We agree with Georgia’s Public Defender’s Office, the
Georgian Young Lawyers Association and Transparency International–
Georgia that pre-trial detention is not justified and that the slap did not
warrant the serious “attack” charge.
We call on the Georgian authorities to immediately release Ms.
Amaghlobeli and to investigate the circumstances of her detention and
whether the charges were politically motivated.