Gakharia's arrest in connection with the dispersal of the "Gavrilov Night" protest has been upheld.
A Tbilisi court upheld the arrest in absentia of former Interior Minister Giorgi Gakharia, who is accused of violently dispersing protesters in June 2019.
As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," in November 2025, a Tbilisi court arrested in absentia Giorgi Gakharia, who is accused of official misconduct during his time as Interior Minister.
Giorgi Gakharia is a former Interior Minister and former Prime Minister of Georgia. He leads the opposition party "For Georgia," which won 12 seats in the 2024 parliamentary elections. Gakharia left Georgia in the summer of 2025.
On January 8, Tbilisi City Court Judge Nato Khujadze upheld the decision to arrest Giorgi Gakharia in the "June 20" case, Georgia Online reports.
Gakharia has been charged with abuse of office and intentional bodily harm to more than two people. He faces up to 13 years in prison, the publication writes.
The criminal prosecution of the former minister was criticized by his fellow party member, Shalva Kereselidze, chairman of the For Georgia faction.
"An interesting chronology: in 2019, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, under Gakharia's leadership, took the position that Sergei Gavrilov should not be allowed into Georgia. Despite this, the Georgian Dream party decided not only to allow Gavrilov in, but also 'mistakenly' to seat him in the chair of parliamentary speaker. […] Six years after the events, an investigation begins," Interpressnews quoted him as saying on January 8.
As a reminder, the Georgian Prosecutor's Office announced the criminal prosecution of Giorgi Gakharia on November 12. One of the charges concerns the events of June 20-21, 2019. According to investigators, it was Gakharia who ordered the simultaneous use of various special forces against demonstrators without warning. The politician himself stated that he denies the charges and considers the case to be "political revenge" by the Georgian authorities.
In October 2024, in an interview with Mtavari Arkhi TV, Gakharia, on the contrary, claimed full responsibility for the dispersal of the protest on the night of June 21, 2019. According to Gakharia, he made the decision to forcibly disperse the demonstration personally and acted within the law, "leading from the ground and acting in accordance with the Minister of Internal Affairs, in accordance with the law." "I made these decisions myself and carried them out myself," he stated. Georgian analysts suggested at the time that Gakharia's words could be an attempt to attract voters or to shield the ruling party from attack.
According to the second charge, on August 24, 2019, Interior Minister Gakharia unilaterally decided to establish an additional police checkpoint near the village of Chorchana on the demarcation line with South Ossetia.
On June 20, 2019, during a meeting of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy, Russian MP Sergei Gavrilov took the seat of the speaker of the Georgian parliament. This sparked protests from opposition factions. The meeting was disrupted, and the Russian delegates left the building, leaving Georgia that same day. That evening, thousands of angry people surrounded the parliament building. They behaved aggressively, attacking police officers and attempting to break into the building. That night, after calls from police to comply with the law failed to produce results, security forces began using tear gas and rubber bullets. According to the Ministry of Health, 240 people were hospitalized.
Although the bullets were rubber, people were seriously injured. One of the victims was Caucasian Knot correspondent Beslan Kmuzov. "I received my first bullets when I tried to help a wounded man. I was filming on the steps of the parliament building when a young man, about 25-28 years old, fell nearby. I helped several people pick him up and carry him to the medics. The man was wounded - his intestine was hanging out of the hole left by a plastic bullet. Then several rubber bullets hit me in the back and leg. After we carried the wounded man to a safe zone, I tried to call on the police to stop shooting. They started shooting at me. I was hit in the stomach, ear, and crown," he was quoted as saying in the "Caucasian Knot" article "Beslan Kmuzov: How demonstrators were shot in Tbilisi".
In December 2025, the Grand Chamber of the ECHR recognized the actions of the Georgian authorities during the dispersal protesters on "Gavrilov's Night" violated the prohibition of inhuman treatment, the rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression, and ordered the state to pay 26 applicants 646,000 euros.
Translated automatically via Google translate from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/419783
![Tumso Abdurakhmanov. Screenshot from video posted by Abu-Saddam Shishani [LIVE] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIR3s7AB0Uw](/system/uploads/article_image/image/0001/18460/main_image_Tumso.jpg "Tumso Abdurakhmanov. Screenshot from video posted by Abu-Saddam Shishani [LIVE] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIR3s7AB0Uw")