Fabricated espionage case: photographer Abdaladze recounts 2011 brutal protest dispersal under UNM Gov't

Photographer and former political prisoner Giorgi Abdaladze on Wednesday recounted the brutal dispersal of the May 26, 2011 protest during a hearing of the Georgian Parliament’s Temporary Investigative Commission examining alleged crimes committed by the former United National Movement Government between 2003 and 2012.

Abdaladze, who was among the photographers arrested in 2011 on fabricated espionage charges, gave a harrowing account of the events that unfolded during the violent crackdown on demonstrators near Rustaveli Avenue .

He said that law enforcement officers did not allow protesters to leave the area and severely beat them, leaving many with head injuries.

“They beat people terribly. They even stormed into the Rustaveli cinema. Many people were dragged out, already badly beaten. They made it impossible for anyone to escape. The crowd was forced toward the Parliament area - into an enclosed space -so that no one could get away”, Abdaladze said.

“Everyone’s head was smashed, regardless of whether they were a man, woman, child, or elderly. They cuffed people and then left them lying in the rain on Rustaveli Avenue. When people begged for help, they beat them even more brutally”, he continued.

On July 7, 2011, under the Government of then-President Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgian law enforcement arrested four photojournalists on fabricated charges of espionage.

The detainees included Zurab Kurtsikidze of the European Pressphoto Agency (EPA), Giorgi Abdaladze of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Irakli Gedenidze of the Presidential Administration, and his wife, Natia Gedenidze, photo editor of Prime Time newspaper.

Following a change in Government, the case was reinvestigated, and numerous witnesses were reinterviewed.

In 2016, the Prosecutor's Office reopened the so-called “photojournalists’ case”, stating that the espionage charges had been fabricated.

According to the Office, the photographers were targeted for actively covering the violent dispersal of the May 26 protest.

On November 22, 2018, the Court of Appeals acquitted all four photographers of espionage. In 2023, a Tbilisi court ordered the Government to compensate them for moral damages.