Elisashvili Sentenced to 13 Years for Attempted Terrorism
By Messenger Staff
Monday, July 13, 2026
A Tbilisi court sentenced opposition figure Aleko Elisashvili to 13 years in prison on July 10, convicting him of attempted terrorism over a 2025 attempt to set fire to the Tbilisi City Court chancellery. The ruling has drawn sharp criticism from his wife and political allies, who call it politically motivated.
Judge Giorgi Gelashvili delivered the verdict. Elisashvili was not present, having been removed from the courtroom earlier after cursing at Georgian Dream Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze and State Minister for Coordination of Law Enforcement Agencies Mamuka Mdinaradze.
Elisashvili admitted to the act but did not plead guilty to terrorism. His lawyers argued for a lesser charge, saying it was protest, not terrorism. In his final statement to the court, he linked the act to past treatment of women at the building. "What is happening in this country, why did I have this thought...Women were dragged along the ground and insulted in this building...Then they [Georgian Dream officials] came out and said she was not a woman...It was a protest. I wanted to spit in the face of this government, to show that they cannot oppress us," he said, according to RFE/RL's Georgian Service.
Elisashvili was arrested in late November 2025 over the chancellery incident and has been in pretrial detention since. Prosecutors initially charged him with attempted property damage under Article 19-187, then upgraded it to attempted terrorism under Article 19-323 on November 30.
The case centers on an incident at the court's chancellery building, where bailiff service employees stopped Elisashvili before law enforcement arrested him at the scene.
Elisashvili's wife, Irina Kilosanidze, told journalists the verdict was written by the ruling party rather than decided by the judge. "Judge Giorgi Gelashvili simply put Georgian Dream's order on paper officially and declared Aleksandre a terrorist," she said.
Kilosanidze described her husband's actions as a protest against an unjust court system, arguing that the outcome had effectively been decided eight months earlier when Shalva Papuashvili called him a terrorist. His legal team plans to appeal through all available court instances, while Elisashvili remains in good spirits, having already written one book and working on a second.
Droa leader Elene Khoshtaria, writing from the Vivamed clinic, expressed solidarity with Elisashvili and his family. She argued that the severity of the sentence reflected weakness rather than strength. "The severity of the sentences today, the number of years sentenced, first of all, indicates the regime's fear, the severity of the regime, and the cowardice of the regime. Therefore, these sentences are not a deprivation of our freedom; they are an indicator of the end of Georgian Dream," she said, adding that Bidzina Ivanishvili had "already crashed into this wall many times" while trying to break people.
Georgia's 5th President Salome Zourabichvili also condemned the sentence, writing on Facebook that it has nothing to do with justice and that those responsible will eventually face consequences. "Those who participate in handing down these verdicts, those who are disgracing the very words 'justice' and 'court' today, their time will come," she wrote, adding that they know they're committing a grave wrong but do it regardless.
