Communicated on 1 December 2014
FOURTH SECTION
Applications nos. 75737/11 and 2204/12
Mariam BATIASHVILI and Irina BATIASHVILI-GELASHVILI against Georgia
and Lasha CHKHARTISHVILI against Georgia
(see list appended)
STATEMENT OF FACTS
1. A list of the applicants is set out in the appendix. They are all Georgian nationals.
2. The facts of the cases, as submitted by them, may be summarised as follows.
3. All three applicants were arrested by the police at around 5 p.m. on 5 June 2011 in the centre of Tbilisi, nearby the building of Parliament of Georgia at the moment when they joined a peaceful demonstration. That demonstration had been planned by a limited number of young opposition activists, including the second and third applicants, who wished to denounce publicly the allegedly excessive use of force by the police during dispersal of another, larger manifestation of opposition forces which had occurred on 26 May 2011.
4. Later in the evening of the same day, at around 8.00 p.m., the arrested applicants were tried by the Tbilisi City Court. After having heard the statements from the applicants, who were assisted by qualified lawyers of their choice, the police officers who had effectuated the applicants’ arrest, as well as a number of independent witnesses who had been summoned by the applicants’ lawyers, the court found all three applicants guilty, under Article 166 and 173 of the Code of Administrative Offences, of administrative offences of breach of public order and disobedience with police officers’ lawful orders. In particular, the impugned actions consisted, according to the court’s findings, in the applicants’ preferring insults in a public setting and refusing to desist from that wrongful activity even after the police officers’ instruction to do so. The first and second applicants were sentenced to pay, each, a fine of 400 Georgian Laris (some 180 Euros), whilst the third applicant was sentenced to ten days’ of administrative detention.
5. The third applicant spent his detention period, from 5 until 15 June 2011, in a short remand prison of the Ministry of the Interior. According to the case file, he did not protest conditions of his detention before the prison authority according to the complaint procedure envisaged to that end by the Prison Code of Georgia.
6. The applicants’ appeals against their convictions were dismissed as manifestly ill-founded by the Tbilisi Court of Appeals on 7 June and 8 July 2011.
COMPLAINTS
7. The applicants complain under Articles 10 and 11 of the Convention, with the second applicant invoking this provision in substance, that their arrest by the police and subsequent imposition of the various administrative sanctions was arbitrary and represented a retribution for their actual and/or perceived association with the anti-Government demonstration which took place on 5 June 2011.
COMMON QUESTION
In the light of the fact that the applicants were arrested by the police on 5 June 2011 at the moment when they apparently attempted to attend a peaceful demonstration, as well as their subsequent conviction for the administrative offences of breach of public order and disobedience of police orders, have there been a violation of the applicants’ rights to freedom of expression and/or freedom of peaceful assembly, contrary to Articles 10 and 11 of the Convention?
APPENDIX
No.
Application no.
Lodged on
Applicant name
date of birth
place of residence
Represented by
75737/11
08/12/2011
Ms Mariam BATIASHVILI
(“the first applicant”)
22/11/1969
Tbilisi, Georgia
Ms Irina BATIASHVILI-GELASHVILI
(“the second applicant”)
08/06/1990
Tbilisi, Georgia
Mr N. Kvaratskhelia, a lawyer practising in Tbilisi
2204/12
07/12/2011
Mr Lasha CHKHARTISHVILI
(“the third applicant”)
16/06/1980
Tbilisi, Georgia
Mr L. Tchintcharauli, and Ms K. Bekauri, lawyers practising in Tbilisi.
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy