Tbilisi City Court Judge Davit Makaradze found lawyer Shota Tutberidze guilty of an administrative offense and imposed a fine of 4,000 GEL as an administrative penalty.

As it turns out, the complaint against Tutberidze was filed in court by the Department for Combating Hate Speech of the Human Rights Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia.

As Tutberidze told InterpressNews, the case concerns a comment made on the post of the Vice-Speaker of the Parliament, Nino Tsilosani.

"The decision is stupid, how can I evaluate this decision? However, it was not surprising from the Murusidze court, moreover, I expected even detention. I had hoped at some point that the voice of conscience and inner faith would prevent this decision from being made, but it seems that this conscience has a very weak voice for some people and not everyone hears it," Tutberidze said.

For information, the case concerns the comments made by Shota Tutberidze on June 2, on the post of the leader of the majority, Nino Tsilosani, who was on a visit to Canada.

The case against Tutberidze was being conducted under Part 1 of Article 173¹⁶ of the Code of Administrative Offenses, which refers to verbal insults to a political official.