"If anyone still believed yesterday or the day before that Ioseliani would be a worthy ombudsman, today there is no longer any doubt that he is just as harmful as Mdinaradze, Kobakhidze, and Zarqua, hired by the regime," wrote Nika Melia, a leader of the *Coalition for Change*, on social media.

According to Nika Melia, Levan Ioseliani "is fiercely defending the forces that stole the elections."

"The public defender is not defending the people or their stolen choice; he is fiercely protecting the forces that stole the elections. Recently, he wrote a Facebook post questioning why, if IDs were confiscated, at least half of those affected are not protesting in the streets. First, he calculated this with Mdinaradze's math, then added that he does not believe vulnerable individuals, victims of state violence, unless they come out to protest.

Earlier, he grudgingly admitted that protesters had been tortured, but now he has backtracked, claiming that the torture did not have a systemic nature.

If anyone still believed yesterday or the day before that Ioseliani would be a worthy ombudsman, today it is clear to everyone that he is just as harmful as Mdinaradze, Kobakhidze, and Zarqua, hired by the regime.

It is highly symbolic that Levan was chosen as the so-called 'public defender' on the very day the Russian law was passed. He is an inseparable part of it.

The Ombudsman's Office has never housed such a harmful figure. The Georgian people have never had such a shameful public defender," Melia wrote on Facebook.