Foreign Minister of Georgia Calls on US Department to Review or Present Evidence on Four Sanctioned Judges
By Liza Mchedlidze
Friday, April 7, 2023
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, Ilia Darchiashvili, wrote a letter to the US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, on the issue of imposing sanctions on four judges, and wrote that the Georgian government expresses hope that the decision will be reviewed or evidence presented.
In his letter to Blinken, Darchiashvili noted that if it's not reviewed or proven, sanctioning the judges will be perceived as pressure on the independent court of the sovereign state and gross interference in its activities.
"The decision of the US State Department on sanctioning judges, which was made public without presenting any evidence, is completely incomprehensible and unacceptable.
We hope that the State Department will provide relevant evidence or reconsider its decision. Otherwise, the State of Georgia and the people of Georgia will perceive this as putting pressure on the independent court of the sovereign state and gross interference in its activities, which will damage the long-standing friendly relations between Georgia and the United States," Darchiashvili's letter reads.
In his letter, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said that it was after the Georgian Dream came to power that reforms were carried out and the court became independent.
Darchiashvili said that until 2012, the court was one of the rings of the 'repressive machine', the rate of guilty verdicts exceeded 99 percent, and 300 thousand citizens were convicted. He wrote that Convicts were tortured in prisons.
Minister emphasized that after the Georgian Dream came to power, the number of prisoners in prisons decreased by 2.5 times, and the death rate decreased by 10 times.
Ilia Darchiashvili also talked about the statistics of appeals by Georgian citizens to the Strasbourg Court and wrote that after the changes in the government, the number of appeals has decreased dramatically.
"In 2009-2012, the European Court considered about 4,000 complaints filed against Georgia. According to the data of 2023, only 147 complaints filed against Georgia are considered in the Strasbourg Court, which is the best indicator of Georgia during its membership in the Council of Europe.
It should be noted that during the period of the previous government, the main creators and architects of the court's criminal system - Mikheil Saakashvili and Zurab Adeishvili - were not sanctioned by any country, and moreover, unfortunately, they enjoyed or still enjoy concrete guarantees of inviolability.
The sharp decrease of complaints in the Strasbourg court, as well as the above statistics, is a clear proof that after 2012, systemic problems in the judicial system have been eliminated, which is the result of the relevant political will and the four waves of fundamental judicial reform carried out by the Georgian Dream government," he said.
According to the letter, the government has repeatedly appealed to the critics of the current judicial system of Georgia, calling them to present specific court cases, which, in their opinion, were decided unfairly. However, the critics have not been able to present any such case so far.
