A preliminary hearing was held at the Tbilisi City Court regarding a new corruption case against former Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili. The court is currently reviewing the admissibility of evidence and must decide whether the case should proceed to a trial on the merits. The accused did not appear at the hearing.
The deputy chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Nariman Dzhelal, sentenced to 17 years, was transported to the prison of the city of Minusinsk in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Most likely, he is being kept in a special block where he is not allowed to make calls, shared his wife Leviza Dzhelalova.
Nariman Jelal is the deputy chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people. This representative body is banned on the territory of the Russian Federation as an “extremist organization.” The politician was detained on September 3, 2021 on suspicion of blowing up a gas pipeline in the village of Perevalnoye by order of Ukrainian intelligence and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He did not admit his guilt.
In the defendant's criminal case, the standards of access to fair justice set out in the European Convention on Human Rights were violated. Human rights activists from the Crimean Process reported this. In particular, at the appeal stage, the court closed the process to listeners, and the principles of openness and publicity were actually ignored. In addition, the state prosecutor was denied only 3 requests out of 15 submitted, the defense - 23 out of 27. The defense was also denied the re-conduct of several examinations.