“It would be unequal treatment of prisoners, discrimination, in fact, if one prisoner were treated differently simply because some foreign national happened to feel sympathy for her, whilst other prisoners, towards whom those same foreigners showed no interest, were treated otherwise. The commission was presumably guided by those considerations as well,” said the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament, Shalva Papuashvili, responding to a question about the pardons commission’s refusal to grant clemency to Mzia Amaglobeli.

In his view, Mzia Amaglobeli is today Brussels’ personal prisoner.

“Brussels and the foreigners are to blame for this. Brussels is to blame because, despite repeated warnings on my part, they were normalising violence as a political instrument. By Brussels, I mean the European Union collectively. The EU Ambassador has not made a single statement condemning the radical opposition’s use of violence as a political tool. It is precisely that failure to condemn which encourages it. The fact that Mzia Amaglobeli went so far as to assault a police officer is directly the fault and consequence of those who, through their silence, encouraged such violence. We observed a second such incident by Ratiani, and I addressed the matter directly with representatives from Brussels. It was the failure to condemn Mzia Amaglobeli’s violence, not a single word, and the decision to stay silent that led to the repetition of the same kind of violence by Ratiani,” said Shalva Papuashvili.

He added that prosecutors had offered Mzia Amaglobeli a plea agreement.

“It was precisely because foreign ambassadors were sitting in that courtroom as self-appointed auditors, encouraging and egging her on, that she neither accepted the plea agreement nor acknowledged that assaulting a police officer was wrong. She was goaded into that position, and consequently, the court and the prosecution had no option but to impose a custodial measure. And so today, Mzia Amaglobeli is Brussels’ personal prisoner, kept there because she serves their purposes: as a pretext to attack the Georgian government. One moment, they pass a resolution; the next, they hand her a medal. One person has been sacrificed so that pressure can be brought to bear on the government. The principal culprit is Brussels, and Brussels is the personal jailer of Mzia Amaglobeli,” said Shalva Papuashvili.