Georgia jails third opposition leader as crackdown expands

By Felix Light

TBILISI (Reuters) -Georgian opposition politician Nika Gvaramia was placed in pre-trial detention on Friday for up to nine months, the latest of several prominent government critics to be jailed.

Having weathered mass demonstrations over a disputed October election and a subsequent decision to halt talks on joining the European Union, Georgian authorities have moved to clamp down on leading figures of the protest movement.

Gvaramia had refused to testify to a parliamentary commission investigating alleged wrongdoing under jailed ex-president Mikheil Saakashvili, who was in power from 2004 to 2012. If convicted of failing to comply with the commission, he could be jailed for up to one year.

Gvaramia is a leader of the pro-Western Coalition for Change bloc which came second in the October election that the opposition rejected as fraudulent. The government rejected the allegation, but two U.S. polling organisations said there was evidence of manipulation.

Gvaramia did not attend his court hearing, instead reporting to prison before the verdict was announced, in what his party said was an effort to show the decision was pre-determined by a biased court.

In a post on Facebook, he wrote: "Not one step back! Our homeland is behind us! The oligarchy must fall! Glory to Georgia!"

Two other Coalition for Change leaders, Zurab Japaridze and Nika Melia, are already in jail on similar charges.

A media entrepreneur who served under Saakashvili in a series of ministerial roles, Gvaramia was previously imprisoned for abuse of office from 2022 to 2023, in a case Western countries said was politically motivated.

Traditionally one of the Soviet Union's most pro-Western and democratic successor states, Georgia has moved in a sharply authoritarian direction in the past two years, with the ruling Georgian Dream party passing a series of laws critics have described as draconian.

Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire ex-prime minister widely seen as the country's most powerful man, has repeatedly pledged to ban opposition parties, whilst also presiding over warming ties with Russia and souring relations with the West.

Earlier this week, authorities issued court summons to over a dozen activists, journalists and opposition politicians on charges of insulting ruling party lawmakers.

On Thursday, a court jailed a 21-year-old protester for four and a half years for assaulting police, in a case government critics have said is fabricated.

(Reporting by Felix Light; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)