7 of 8 detained in MP’s personal footage leak receive bail, one imprisoned

A Tbilisi  judge has given seven of eight individuals arrested for the distribution and possession of an MP’s private life footage bail yesterday and sent one to pre-trial detention.

Zurab Solomonashvili who was sentenced to imprisonment is accused in uploading the footage on YouTube. Other seven person were accused in spreading the footage via social network and messaging apps.

Ministry of Internal Affairs arrested 17 people in total regarding the personal footage case after the statement of Georgian Dream ruling party MP Eka Beselia, who said on 28 January that footage of her personal life recorded under the United National Movement leadership had gone viral.

Three out of 17 detained were sentenced to imprisonment, 14 released on bail.

Recording, storing and release of the footage related to an individual's personal life is a crime which is punishable by imprisonment from four to eight years.

Prosecutor's office demanded imprisonment as the preventive measure for all the eight accused at yesterday's hearing.

As for Zurab Solomonashvili who has been accused of uploading the footage and imprisoned, his lawyer said that he ded not upload the footage on YouTube personally. He did not exclude that someone used Solomanshvili's user account to upload the video.

The court decision is not justified regarding Solomonashvili. We are going to appeal,” the lawyer Mukhran Gurtskaia said.

Eka Beselia herself believes that the investigators should be ‘fair and humanistic’ towards those accused who are ‘'less guilty in what happened’. She said it should be far more important for the investigators to reveal who is standing behind the ‘illegal campaign and moral terror’.