The Public Defender of Georgia submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Kutaisi Court of Appeals regarding the use of preventive measures against Mzia Amaglobeli, a founder of Batumelebi and Netgazeti media outlets.

According to the Public Defender’s Office’s statement, “The document addresses the deficiencies in justifying detention as a preventive measure and, against the background of the analysis of legal standards, discusses that such intensive restriction of a person’s freedom based solely on abstract and potential threats is inadmissible.”

“By criminal procedure legislation and European Court of Human Rights standards, imposing detention as a preventive measure requires relevant and sufficient evidence that would justify restricting the defendant’s freedom to this degree. In the motion for preventive measures, the prosecution pointed to risks of both flight and destruction of evidence/witness tampering. Such risks may potentially exist in all legal proceedings where criminal prosecution is ongoing. However, the threat that would justify imposing the strictest preventive measure and restriction of freedom must be specific.

Otherwise, under conditions of abstract threat, the use of detention would effectively be possible in all cases. In its motion, the prosecution also pointed to the risk of committing a new crime, citing as its main argument the fact that the accused had been released from administrative detention for several hours, and the court accepted this argument. It should be noted that the fact based on which Mzia Amaglobeli was administratively detained has not been evaluated by the court.

The court has not reviewed the legality of Mzia Amaglobeli’s detention or her commission of an administrative offence. Under these circumstances, the Public Defender considered that this circumstance does not constitute an argument that would overcome all other arguments against the use of detention. Furthermore, when submitting a motion for preventive measures, the prosecutor is obligated to justify the appropriateness of the requested preventive measure and the inappropriateness of using other, less strict preventive measures.

The Public Defender’s Office reviewed the presented indictment, prosecutor’s motion, court ruling, and defence appeal, and concluded that the prosecutor had not properly justified why using other, less strict preventive measures was not appropriate, especially since according to the appeal, the defence expressed readiness to both pay a fairly large amount of bail and accept additional obligations. The Batumi City Court ruling made it clear that the court did not properly address the defence’s offer and left the issue of using a less strict preventive measure without proper justification.

The Public Defender hopes that the Kutaisi Court of Appeals will take into account the legal arguments presented in the amicus curiae brief and will discuss the use of proportional preventive measures against Mzia Amaglobeli, which would be justified by specific threats if such exist,” reads the information released by the Public Defender’s Office.

The law enforcement officers arrested Amaglobeli on January 12 under Article 353 of the Criminal Code, which addresses offences related to assaulting a police officer. On January 14, the Batumi City Court sentenced Mzia Amaglobeli to prison as a preventive measure.