In the 39-volume case file, only a few pages concern Irakli Chkhvirkia, and even in the charge sheet, as the lawyer said, he is given only a “single miserable paragraph.” According to defense attorney Boris Chele Qurua, speaking before Judge Irakli Khuskivadze in the 4 October protest case, the accusation is entirely unsubstantiated and based on only one direct piece of evidence, which he says proves nothing. He requested that Chkhvirkia be found not guilty.

“As a rule, lawyers begin their closing arguments with a phrase like ‘this is a case about this and that,’ they try to give it a title. I could not think of anything, because this is not really a case at all — it is idleness, mainly investigative idleness. As Sir William Blackstone said, it is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer… I do not know what Sir William would say about ten innocent people whose cases we are reviewing here; I want to speak about one of those ten innocents,” he said.

According to him, the prosecution failed to present any direct evidence against Irakli Chkhvirkia.

“We all saw, not only you, Your Honor, but everyone present here, your assistants, even the bailiffs, that there is no evidence against my client. And if there is any, it has not been presented by the prosecution or examined in this courtroom.

In a 39-volume case file, only a few pages concern Irakli Chkhvirkia, and even the charge sheet gives him only one ‘miserable paragraph.’

The charge states that Irakli Chkhvirkia actively participated in group violence, that he, together with others, entered the courtyard of the Presidential Administration building with the aim of seizing a strategic object, overcoming resistance from law enforcement, and that while near a damaged gate he encouraged others to continue violent actions and enter the yard.

The first obvious lie is that Irakli Chkhvirkia was in the courtyard of the Presidential Administration, even for a second. The materials they themselves presented show that he never entered the territory,” the lawyer said.

He added that out of 135 witnesses, none testified that Chkhvirkia committed any crime or even mentioned him in a meaningful way (excluding the arresting officer and a forensic identification expert).

The lawyer also referred to a 14-second video used as evidence, saying that Chkhvirkia appears only briefly and does nothing illegal.

“There is only one 14-second video in the case file, in which for about six seconds Irakli appears intermittently. He does not commit violence, does not break anything, and does not enter the Presidential Administration yard.

Even the prosecutor said in the closing statement that he was in the courtyard, but there is no evidence of that whatsoever. Not a single piece of evidence supports it,” he said.

According to the defense, even the claim that Chkhvirkia was calling others to violence is false, and his gesture of raising his hand was actually a call for help after being affected by tear gas.

The lawyer also emphasized the legal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt,” arguing that no such threshold is met in the case and that only assumptions are being used against the defendant.

He concluded by referring to Chkhvirkia’s personal circumstances, saying he was displaced from Abkhazia at the age of six and is the sole caregiver for his disabled mother and elderly disabled grandmother.

“I am not saying this so that you feel pity for Irakli. No one needs pity. I just want you to see the scale of the tragedy caused by the authorities’ intent to target political opponents and by the flawed investigation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” the lawyer said.