On 5 October, Administrative Board of Tbilisi City Court has partially satisfied the lawsuit by Ekaterine Abashidze, a journalist hit by a police-fired “non-lethal” bullets during June 20-21 protests in Tbilisi.
According to the Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA), a local watchdog defending the plaintiff’s interests in the court, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) has been ordered to pay the plaintiff GEL 3000 to “compensate for the moral damage.”
According to GYLA, the court’s verdict is important because it places the state’s accountability before the conclusion of the ongoing criminal investigation concerning the violence and excessive use of force by the law enforcement during the 2019 protests.
The verdict has not entered into force yet and the plaintiff may decide to appeal the amount of compensation after receiving the court’s legal reasoning.
On 19-20 June, well over 200 people, including about 40 journalists (among them Civil.ge’s Guram Muradov) and 80 police officers, were injured in the police dispersal of the anti-occupation rally outside the Parliament building on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi. Tensions had flared in the capital after Sergei Gavrilov, Russian communist MP, addressed the Inter-parliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy session held in the Georgian Parliament from the Speaker’s seat.
Also Read:
- 31/12/2019 – 2019: The Year in Review
- 21/06/2019 – 240 Injured During Last Night’s Unrest, Health Ministry Says
