TBILISI, May 21 (Reuters) – A court in Georgia sentenced a senior opposition figure to 2-1/2 years in prison on Thursday on charges of sabotage and inciting a coup at local elections last year, the Interpress news agency reported.
Levan Khabeishvili, a former chair of the United National Movement (UNM), one of the South Caucasus country’s largest opposition groups, was arrested last September after he repeatedly urged Georgians to take to the streets in a “peaceful revolution” on the day of municipal elections.
Khabeishvili has rejected the charges against him, according to Georgian media.
The governing Georgian Dream party, in power since 2012, swept the municipal elections on October 4 last year. The two largest opposition blocs, including the UNM, boycotted the vote in line with a wider standoff with the government.
Georgians have protested nightly since November 2024, when the government announced it was freezing accession talks to the European Union.
Georgian riot police used pepper spray and water cannons to disperse demonstrators on election night after some protesters tried to force entry to the presidential palace in the capital Tbilisi.
Ten people, including a prominent Georgian opera singer, were sentenced to lengthy prison terms this month in connection with those protests. Government critics say the sentences were part of a broader pattern of attempts by Georgian Dream to silence opposition voices as Georgia takes what they see as an anti-Western U-turn to an authoritarian, pro-Russian path.
The government denies its policies are authoritarian and accuses opposition parties – several of which it is seeking to ban outright – of trying to foment violent coups.
(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
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