The Chairman of the Georgian Dream said at a special briefing that Nika Gvaramia had been sentenced for the crimes against the media.

“First of all, we want to note that we had no plans whatsoever to make any special statements about the case of financial damage to Rustavi 2. Specific individuals committed a specific crime, and they were sentenced by the court in accordance with the law. We believe that the mere fact that Gvaramia and Damenia are high-ranking officials of the previous authorities and are currently engaged in opposition political activities does not constitute grounds for us to issue a political statement in response to the revelation of the crime that they committed against the media.

We note from the outset that we are not planning to talk about the verdict against Gvaramia and Damenia at this time. We would like to focus only on the hysterical campaign, which should be unequivocally assessed as an attempt to politicize justice.

Before assessing this attempt, I would like to remind you of the quote from a statement by more than 20 so-called NGOs regarding the court’s decision: “Both the course of the trial and its ultimate outcome do not correspond to the requirements of a fair trial and further reinforce our suspicions of gross interference by the authorities in the decision-making process. We stress that the decision undermines Georgia’s future development prospects, restricts media freedom and a pluralistic media environment, and poses a threat to the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration process”.

This quote pertains not to the verdict of yesterday but the decision of 2017. Even then, five years ago, the National Movement, the NGOs affiliated with it, the then President, the then Public Defender, and their foreign lobbyists were waging a hysterical campaign, based on lies and fakes, in connection with the Rustavi 2 case. This lie and fake was exposed by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg within two years.

Although during its rule the UNM seized Rustavi 2 in a completely bandit-like manner and in broad daylight, this party as well as its partners and lobbyists brazenly and shamelessly asserted that the court had unjustly returned the television station to its rightful owner. Unfortunately, a similar brazen and shameless campaign is witnessed by the public today as well. Let us remind you that the initiation of the campaign against the Georgian judiciary is chronologically connected with the case of Rustavi 2, and to this day, this campaign is underway with the use of Soviet propaganda methods and the attachment of labels.

We do not want to talk about the details of yesterday’s verdict at all. We will focus on a single circumstance pertaining to the case. Pseudo-lawyers of the UNM assert the “absurdity” of the verdict by referring to the fact that Gvaramia was robbing the television station in agreement with its then owners. This is a completely feeble argument – when the illegal owners of a television station and its general director agree to rob the television station, which was to be returned to its rightful owner, naturally, this cannot absolve the general director of responsibility.

Here is another quote, this time from the Strasbourg court’s decision on the case of Sandro Girgvliani: “The Court is struck by how the different branches of State power ... all acted in concert in preventing justice from being done in this gruesome homicide case”.

While these people used to surprise us during their time in power by coordinating around injustice, now they are surprising us from the ranks of the opposition. The concerted actions, both past and present, of the United National Movement and its satellite parties, its own media outlets, NGOs, public defenders, and foreign lobbyists, aimed at preventing justice from being served in the case of the National Movement’s seizure of Rustavi 2, the cases against Mikheil Saakashvili regarding Sandro Girgvliani, Valeri Gelashvili, 7 November, Imedi TV, and corruption, and the case against Nika Gvaramia regarding the robbery of Rustavi 2, are truly astonishing”, - said Irakli Kobakhidze.