Gigi Ugulava, former Tbilisi Mayor under the United National Movement government, has echoed the ECHR’s recent ruling that his initial arrest in 2014 [during the Georgian Dream ruling] and detention had been based on “legitimate suspicions he might be a flight risk or otherwise harm the investigation.”

“However, the manner in which the period ordered from 2 April until 17 September 2015 had been imposed had not been sufficient to protect the applicant from arbitrariness.”

According to the European Court of Human Rights, the authorities had failed to account for the passage of time and changing circumstances in ordering further detention, from 18 February 2015 onwards, in one of Ugulava’s trials.

“The Court held that Georgia was to pay the applicant 10,000 euros (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damage.”

In his Facebook post, Ugulava said: “I won against the Georgian Dream in the first and third paragraphs of the fifth article of the European Convention.”

“The main thing that makes me happy is that the Strasbourg court practically put an end to the harmful practice of pre-trial detention for over 9 months as [President] Salome Zourabichvili explained to us – even if Saakashvili is pardoned, the Georgian Dream will arrest him with pre-trial detention again. This is a lie,” Ugulava asserted.

In its remark, the Georgian Justice Ministry said that as per the ECHR ruling, “Ugulava’s arrest was legal and had no political motives.”

In today’s Chamber judgment in the case of Ugulava v. Georgia (application no. 5432/15) the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:

no violation of Article 5 § 1 (right to liberty and security) of the European Convention on Human Rights on account of the arrest and remand during the period between 3 July 2014 and 2 April 2015;

a violation of Article 5 § 1 of the European Convention on account of the remand between 2 April and 17 September 2015;

no violation of Article 5 § 1 on account of the lack of a fixed period of detention in the orders of 4 July 2014 and 15 March 2015;

a violation of Article 5 § 3 (right to liberty and security), and no violation of Article 18 (limitation on restriction of rights) in conjunction with Article 5.

For the record, the case concerned the arrest of Mr Ugulava on 3 July 2014 and his pre-trial detention until 17 September 2015. He was wanted in connection with money laundering and other crimes, with several criminal proceedings taking place in parallel.