“This regime is treacherous; it lost its human face a long time ago, and today is yet another manifestation of that. They could have simply said that no decision had been made regarding pardons and not created these expectations. Families have expectations, and today people have been standing by the prison from morning until evening,” said Tato Kelbakiani, head of the organization Prevention for Progress, on PalitraNews’ program "Resume".

According to Kelbakiani, “Georgian Dream” has constantly tried to obtain requests for pardon from those detained during the protests, in order to justify itself regarding the illegal imprisonment of activists.

“Kavelashvili decides nothing here; this person represents nothing. The decision is made by one person, and just as that person decided on the illegal detention of these people, he could also have made a decision regarding their pardon.

We clearly saw that this regime has consistently tried to extract repentance and confessions from people who are absolutely innocent and imprisoned, so that it could later absolve itself of the crimes in which it is itself entangled.

They (‘Georgian Dream’ representatives) also understand that keeping so many unlawfully detained prisoners in jail for so long will sooner or later come back to haunt them. It will come back to everyone - those who falsified evidence, those who issued the verdicts, those who made political statements, and so on. Therefore, making such a compromise would be a kind of relief even for them.

This regime is treacherous; it lost its human face long ago, and today is yet another example of that. They could have said that no decision had been made regarding pardons and not created these expectations. Families have expectations, and people have been standing by the prison from morning until evening. This is an inhuman, sadistic manifestation,” Kelbakiani said.