Georgian Ombudsman Levan Ioseliani, on air at the TV Pirveli channel, explained his social media post regarding the sentencing of his former ally and opposition politician Aleko Elisashvili. The Public Defender stated that he cited the prison terms of officials from Mikheil Saakashvili’s presidency as an example because he believes that, in any case, punishment must be fair and proportionate to the crime committed.
“I wrote this comparison because I believe that under any circumstances, punishment must be fair. By fairness, I mean that it must correspond to reality and be proportionate to the act the person committed. After all, I am not talking about Aleko’s innocence, am I? In my opinion, no one is talking about that at all, right? The punishment must correspond to what he did. I believe that 13 years of imprisonment is not the term that should have been handed down to him. It could have been shorter,” Ioseliani explained.
The Ombudsman emphasized that he does not intend to comment on the legal classification of the case—namely, whether it concerns terrorism or another crime. He pointed out that Elisashvili’s lawyers had signed a non-disclosure agreement regarding the case materials, which is why he himself did not have access to them.
“I am deliberately not going to speak about the legal classification—whether it is terrorism or not. As of today, I have not seen the text of the verdict containing the relevant justification. Once I review the court’s decision, I will express my position,” Ioseliani said.
As a reminder, on July 13, Georgian Public Defender Levan Ioseliani reacted to the sentence handed down to opposition politician and his friend Aleko Elisashvili by publishing a post on social media. He compared the prison terms of Elisashvili and officials from Saakashvili’s team — Vano Merabishvili, Zurab Adeishvili, David Kezerashvili, and others, pointing out that Elisashvili’s sentence is disproportionate to his actions.