In the case materials that were presented against Tornike Razmadze and that were handed over to him, there is talk of Article 166, which provides for cursing and swearing, but does not provide for it in relation to an official. In the event that this were an insult to Irakli Kobakhidze, since he is in a so-called official position, this should have been [an article] related to an official, which has a separate special article in the Code of Administrative Offenses, – this was stated by Marika Arevadze, a member of “Coalition for Change” and lawyer of activist Tornike Razmadze, on the PalitraNews program “Resume.”

According to Arevadze, Tornike Razmadze’s case is a continuation of the line that Bidzina Ivanishvili voiced in 2024, during the pre-election campaign, in the context of apologizing.

“Tornike Razmadze’s case is not one concrete case, even of the kind of which we have hundreds of other cases that are fabricated and prepared specifically against active people. This is an even stronger argument of what is happening in Georgia today and what the real face of ‘Georgian Dream’ is.

We see that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of ‘Georgian Dream’ has switched to the defense of Russian propagandists, and we see that in the case materials that were presented against Tornike and that were handed over to him, there is talk of Article 166, which provides for cursing and swearing, but does not provide for it in relation to an official. In the event that this were an insult to Irakli Kobakhidze, since he is in a so-called official position, this should have been [a charged article] related to an official, which has a separate special article in the Code of Administrative Offenses.

In reality, what we are dealing with is a continuation of the line that Bidzina Ivanishvili stated in 2024, when he dared in Gori and said that Georgia must apologize. Part of this line is precisely the words that Margarita Simonyan says in the video shared by Tornike, where Simonyan insults both our past and our present and says that despite the fact that we insult you, you must come on your knees and beg us to be with us. This is precisely the line chosen by ‘Georgian Dream,’ and that is why they defend Russian propagandists and, to please them, try to detain or bring to liability – that is, they carry out persecution against their own citizens.

When these materials were handed over to Tornike and he published information about this, of course this was followed by a public reaction because Georgia and the Georgian people are not as lacking in self-respect as ‘Georgian Dream’ is. The Georgian people had an appropriate reaction. [Representatives of ‘Georgian Dream’] realized that with this they had made a big mistake and that this could become the beginning of a rather big unpleasantness, and they immediately changed their position and said that they are supposedly accusing him of insulting Irakli Kobakhidze and, what is most important, in order to strengthen their argument, they involved another person in the case who has nothing to do with it at all – Ana Bdeiani, who has more than once become the object of persecution by ‘Georgian Dream.’ We do not know at all what they are accusing Ana of, because neither the case materials have been handed over to her, nor has anyone contacted her from the court.

Here one important part is that after the reaction of the Georgian people frightened them, they invented a new case, the materials of which have been handed over neither to Tornike nor to Ana, and this directly indicates that this so-called new case is not an administrative offense, but a fabricated case in order to package something and show the Russians how they punish Georgian citizens to please them,” – Marika Arevadze stated.

For reference, civil activist Tornike Razmadze disseminated information that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia is accusing him of insulting “Russian propagandists.” Specifically, according to Tornike Razmadze, the Directorate for Combating Hate Speech established within the Ministry of Internal Affairs initiated administrative proceedings against him over the verbal insult of Margarita Simonyan and Vladimir Solovyov.

Later, the Directorate for Combating Hate Speech of the Human Rights Protection Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs clarified that civil activist Tornike Razmadze is being accused of insulting Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze.