Tbilisi court sentences pro-European activist to four years

A Tbilisi City Court judge has sentenced Archil Museliants, a pro-European activist born in 1997, to four years in prison for damaging surveillance cameras near the parliament building by setting them on fire, causing a loss of 534 Georgian lari.

Judge Giorgi Arevadze on Friday explained that Museliants was serving a suspended sentence at the time of the offence, which led to a punishment above the minimum term provided by law. Museliants was charged under Article 187(2)(a) of the Georgian Criminal Code, which prescribes three to six years of imprisonment for deliberate damage or destruction of property.

In announcing the sentence, Judge Arevadze referenced European legal precedents. He cited a 2017 case in Hamburg where protesters who set fire to public property received three-year prison sentences, as well as a 2019 case in Paris in which detainees received two- and three-year sentences.

Museliants was detained on 30 November 2024 during pro-European protests, shortly after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s announcement about the delay in the country’s EU integration until 2028, on Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi. Initially held under administrative charges, his case was later reclassified under criminal law.