Former Georgian Minister of Culture and ex-Minister of Justice Tea Tsulukiani has prevailed in her legal dispute against TV host Nanuka Zhorzholiani before the Supreme Court as well. Zhorzholiani herself announced the ruling.
The lawsuit stemmed from an April 12, 2025, Facebook post in which the journalist alleged that Tsulukiani’s father, Judge Avtandil Tsulukiani, had sentenced specific individuals to execution by firing squad. At the time, Zhorzholiani published a corresponding list of names.
Tea Tsulukiani petitioned the court to declare the following statement from Zhorzholiani’s post defamatory: “Tsulukiani’s father had the following people shot (the list is detailed in the amended claim).”
Tsulukiani also sought a ruling designating another assertion from the same post as defamation: “It was a transitional period when the death penalty was being abolished, and Judge Tsulukiani could have applied an alternative maximum sentence.”
For its part, Nanuka Zhorzholiani’s legal defense maintained that the information was gathered from open sources and that the post was protected under freedom of expression. Zhorzholiani reiterated this argument today, October 13, in a published video address in which she once again defended her 2025 post.
According to the television host, she intends to appeal the Supreme Court’s decision to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg.
