Georgia’s newly-elected president pardons over 600 inmates
- 21 January, 18:33
Georgia’s new president Mikheil Kavelashvili pardoned 613 convicts on Sunday on the occasion of Epiphany, only three weeks after his inauguration.
In a short statement published on his Facebook page on January 19, Kavelashvili said: “With outstanding humanitarian compassion, the pardoned individuals were given the opportunity to return to their families and once again become full members of society.” The president did not specify the crimes committed by the pardoned convicts.
However, Mamuka Mdinaradze, the Executive Secretary of the ruling Georgian Dream party, explained on Monday that the president had pardoned convicts “based on objective circumstances”, contrasting it with the practice used by his predecessors, which he claimed had been a “matter of political or other bargaining”.
“Mikheil Kavelashvili has started his career [as the President] with one of the most humane, correct decisions and made many families happy. Not only were the President and his administration involved in this, but the entire system, especially the penitentiary institution of the Ministry of Justice”, the ruling party official said.
Responding to critics of the new round of amnesties, Mdinaradze reminded that former President Salome Zourabichvili had pardoned “the murderer of a 22-year-old police officer.”
The official stressed that the Georgia Dream party’s goal was to “ensure correct execution of sentences from a preventive perspective” and reduce the number of prisoners in order to “get as close as possible to the average European standard”.
It should be noted that in the past, pardons were given by a special commission that was abolished in 2019. No information about the pardons has been published on the president’s website.
