TBILISI. April 13 (Interfax) - The Tbilisi City Court on Monday sentenced Georgia's former defense minister Irakly Okruashvili to five years in prison for participation in the June 20, 2019 riots, when several hundreds of people tried to break into the building of the parliament in the Georgian capital.
The defense lawyers will file an appeal, the former minister's lawyer Mamuka Chabashvili told reporters.
Chabashvili said he does not know whether Okruashvili will ask Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili to pardon him.
According to earlier reports, the Georgian opposition in June 2019 opposed the arrival in Tbilisi of a Russian delegation to attend a session of the Interparliamentary Assembly on Orthodoxy (IAO). The IAO is chaired by State Duma deputy Sergei Gavrilov. The opposition activists accused him of having visited Abkhazia and demanded that he be denied entry in the country. That led to the aggravation of Russian-Georgian relations.
The assembly was conducted in the Georgian parliament on June 20. At the beginning of the session, Gavrilov took the speaker's seat, which outraged the Georgian parliamentary opposition, which disrupted the event. Gavrilov told Interfax the IAO members and administration had decided to end their work early due to a threat. The IAO delegation left Tbilisi, escorted by security service officials.
Georgia's opposition parties led their supporters to a protest rally to protest Gavrilov's behavior. The protesters tried to storm the parliament, but the attempt was averted by law enforcement officials. A special task force later used acoustic cannons, tear gas and water jet cannons to make the protesters leave Rustaveli Avenue. Two hundred and forty people, including journalists, were hurt in the clashes between protesters and police in Tbilisi.
On June 21, the president and the Georgina parliament speaker interrupted their visits to Belarus and Azerbaijan due to the riots. On the same day, it was announced that Georgian parliament speaker Irakly Bobakhidze, on whose resignation the opposition had insisted, had left the post.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili said amid the protests in central Tbilisi that Russia was interested in the aggravation of the conflict.
Russia was sharply negative about the riots in Tbilisi. On June 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the situation in Georgia with permanent members of the Russian Security Council. According to Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov, "the russophobic provocation provoked by extremist elements against the Russian parliamentarians was regarded as a very dangerous manifestation."
The Russian Foreign Ministry recommended that Russian citizens "refrain from visiting Georgia for their personal safety." Later that day, Putin signed a decree temporarily banning Russian airlines from flying Russians from Russia to Georgia from July 8. Tour operators and tour agents were urged to refrain from selling tour products envisaging the transportation of citizens to Georgia. The government was ordered to take measures to ensure repatriation to Russia of citizens who were temporarily on the territory of Georgia, and also their luggage.
On June 24, Russia's consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor said control over the quality of Georgian wine and other alcoholic beverages imported in Russia had been toughened. The amount of Georgian alcohol not meeting the mandatory requirements almost trippled in 2014-2018, reaching 203,000 liters, it said.