Elene Khoshtaria, leader of the opposition Droa party, was sentenced to 1.5 years in prison after the court found her guilty in a “property damage” case launched over her writing protest messages on Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze’s campaign banner in September. Tbilisi City Court judge Giorgi Arevadze delivered the ruling on March 24.
Khoshtaria was detained on September 15, 2025, for writing protest messages on Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze’s campaign banner in solidarity with activist and student Megi Diasamidze, who has been on trial over a similar act.
She was charged with “damaging or destroying another person’s property which has resulted in substantial damage,” a charge carrying a punishment of a fine, community service, corrective labour, house arrest for a term of six months to two years, or imprisonment for a term of one to five years. Prosecutors said Khoshtaria damaged three campaign banners, causing total damage of GEL 570 (USD 210).
On September 17, she was granted bail but remained in custody as she refused to post it, saying it would not mean freedom and she did not want to “take part in lies and a farce.”
Her arrest and prosecution drew backlash, with critics seeing it as disproportionate and politically motivated.
Khoshtaria has been among several opposition figures arrested over the past year in separate cases. Some have since been released after serving sentences for defying a Georgian Dream parliamentary commission, while others, including Ahali’s Nika Melia and former defense minister Irakli Okruashvili, have seen their prison terms extended through new convictions.
Khoshtaria, along with seven other opposition party leaders, also faces separate charges in a “sabotage” case opened in November. She has been charged with sabotage, the provision of material resources for sabotage, and aiding a foreign state in hostile activities, offenses punishable by 7 to 15 years in prison.
Khoshtaria’s Droa is among the nine opposition parties that united in an “Opposition Alliance” early in March, pledging to work together towards “preserving national independence and statehood” and “peaceful dismantling of Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream’s autocratic, criminal regime.”
On March 12, the European Parliament adopted a resolution titled “The Case of Elene Khoshtaria and Political Prisoners under the Georgian Dream Regime,” demanding, among others, the release of Khoshtaria and “others detained for politically motivated reasons or for the peaceful exercise of their fundamental rights.”
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