ECHR Grand Chamber weighed in on Georgia’s imprisoned ex interior minister case

The Grand Chamber of the European Court for Human Rights held a hearing today, March 8, into the Georgian government’s appeal against an earlier Court judgment that criminal proceedings against former minister of interior Vano Merabishvili violated two articles of the European Convention.

Vano Merabishvili is currently serving a prison sentence for a number of offences, including embezzlement and abuse of authority.

The ECHR found that the imprisonment of Merabishvili was unlawful and had a ‘hidden agenda” behind it, said his lawyer Otar Kakhidze. “If the Grand Chamber finds the European Convention was indeed violated [in how Merabishvili’s case was handled], the authorities will have to set him free,” Kakhidze said. “Also, other political prisoners’ cases will have to be reconsidered.”

As of this writing, the hearing has been finalized, however it is unclear when the Chamber will announce its decision.

Former deputy minister of justice of Georgia Tina Burjaliani told JAMnews the case was of “unprecedented importance to the Grand Chamber”. “It is a rare opportunity for it to set the standard for [the application of] article 18 of the Convention [limitation on use of restrictions on rights]”, she said.

17 judges were assigned to hear the case, a fact that Burjaliani said made it difficult to predict what the Grand Chamber’s final decision would be. If it decides in Merabishvili’s favour, than the Georgian authorities will, most likely, have to release him, even though the Court’s main objections are leveled at the circumstances of his pre-trial detention, rather than at the charges brought against him, according to Burjaliani. “Usually, when article 18 is found to have been violated, detainees automatically get to be released, even if the Court’s ruling does not contain a specific order for this to happen,” she said. “The ruling is then passed to the EU’s Council of Ministers, and it is there that measures to implement it are determined.”

A 2012 PACE resolution on political prisoners urged member states of the Council of Europe “to reassess the cases of any alleged political prisoners” and “to release or retry any such prisoners as appropriate”. In 2013, Georgia became the first CoE member state in the South Caucasus region to move to comply with the PACE requirement. However, it still has an extended list of controversial detentions to deal with, and Vano Merabishvili’s case is one of them.