Court says Ex-Georgian president, other former top officials must pay $75,000 for beating ex-opposition MP
Opposition MP Valeri Gelashvili (R) was nearly killed in 2005, under Saakashvili’s (L) leadership. Photo: Primetime.ge.
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Tbilisi City Court has delivered a verdict which says that former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, ex-Interior Minister Ivane Merabishvili, ex-Interior Ministry official Erekle Kodua, the Georgian Interior and Finance Ministries must pay $75,000 in moral and psychological compensation to Valeri Gelashvili, a former opposition MP who was brutally beaten in 2005, under the rule of the United National Movement.
Gelashvili’s lawyer Kakha Kozhoridze says that such a decision is quite rare in the Georgian court.
The decision means that we will have the right to demand the payment of the total money from one of them [mentioned above], or from all of them”, Kozhoridze said.
He stated that Gelashvili and his lawyers have not yet decided which form of payment to choose, as the defendants have the right to appeal the recent decision of the court.
In June 2018 Tbilisi City Court sentenced Saakashvili to six years in prison in absentia for exceeding official powers, violence and deliberate damage to health over the high profile violence case against opposition legislator Gelashvili.
Merabishvili was earlier sentenced in the case.
Tbilisi Court of Appeals did not change the previous verdict delivered by Tbilisi City Court in January this year and found the third president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili guilty for abuse of power over the high-profile murder case of Sandro Girgvliani in 2006.
Tbilisi City Court has sentenced former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili to six years in prison in absentia for exceeding official powers, violence and deliberate damage to health over the high profile violence case against opposition lawmaker Valeri Gelashvili.
Three former police officials have been sentenced to several years behind bars for physically assaulting and robbing an opposition politician Valeri Gelashvili in 2005, under the previous United National Movement (UNM) government.
Georgian authorities have begun criminal proceedings against two ex-Government officials accused of assaulting a Member of Parliament almost 10 years ago.
Georgia continues to demand the extradition of former President of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili from Ukraine, despite the fact his Ukrainian citizenship was reinstated earlier this week, the Georgian Chief Prosecutor’s Office says.
The Georgian prosecutor general’s office on Tuesday said 14 individuals who had been illegally convicted under the United National Movement government in two separate cases had been acquitted by courts in capital Tbilisi and western city of Kutaisi following the office’s “new, unbiased and comprehensive” investigation.