Tbilisi City Court accepted on Sunday prosecution’s motion and ordered pre-trial detention for ex-mayor of Tbilisi Gigi Ugulava after criminal charges in one of the multiple cases against him were re-qualified by the prosecutor’s office.
Ugulava, one of the senior figures in opposition UNM party, is already in a pre-trial detention since early July, 2014 in connection to a separate case. In that case nine months, which is a maximum term for pre-trial detention, is expiring in early April, but Sunday’s court ruling means that Ugulava will no longer be released in early April.
After the charges were re-qualified against Ugulava, the U.S. embassy in Tbilisi released a statement expressing “concern” and saying that the prosecution’s moves “appear to be an effort to subvert the nine-month limit on pre-trial detention.”
Similar tactic was used by the prosecution against ex-defense minister and former prison chief Bacho Akhalaia, who was arrested in November 2012 and whose pre-trial detention was extended for several times by gradually adding new charges against him before he was sentenced to 7.5 years in jail in October, 2014.
At the court hearing on Sunday, Ugulava said that keeping him behind bars without verdict for more than nine months was unconstitutional. “This is rape of constitution,” he said in a speech after which Ugulava requested to be escorted out of the courtroom in protest; his supporters also walked out of the courtroom, some of them shouting insults at the court and prosecution.
During the hearing Ugulava’s defense lawyers tried in vain to recuse the judge Jemal Kopaliani, claiming that he would have failed to be unbiased as his two sons were working in the law enforcement agencies.
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