When a Tbilisi court cleared 22-year-old Tedo Abramov of serious drug charges, it was the second high‑profile acquittal this month tied to Georgia’s protest wave since late 2024.
A little over a week ago, doctor-activist Giorgi Akhobadze was also acquitted; he, too, for drug crime. Activists celebrated. Then came the afterthought: if, as many among the opposition claim, the courts are under tight government control, how did these acquittals happen?
Across their associated platforms, several explanations emerged. One, voiced by UNM point man Levan Khabeishvili, is that “some judges are rebellious and no longer carry out the system’s orders.” Nika Gvaramia argued the Akhobadze verdict was the court system’s reaction to its own weaknesses and to public disorientation.
Others have suggested the verdicts are symbolic blows to Georgian Dream, though without agreeing on the exact cause. Some frame them simply as signs that the ruling party’s grip on the judiciary is not absolute.
How hurt this must make all those NGO lawyers feel. All the hard work dissecting the prosecution cases, and no credit?
We’ll be the first to acknowledge that GD needs to get its act together. Gangs jumping on opposition figures in back streets, and no investigation? They’re surely no beacons of anything. But everyone who lived in Georgia before 2012 knows that under the opposition’s watch, the courts were no less tainted, and often worse.
The last thing the theorists want to consider is the simplest explanation: that the judges looked at the evidence, found it too weak, and let the defendants go. Something that, during the days their own politicians ran the show, practically never happened.
