Inashvili Says Gharibashvili's Life in Danger, Calls for Special Protection
By Messenger Staff
Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Irma Inashvili, leader of the Patriots' Alliance, says the life of imprisoned former Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili is in danger and is publicly calling on authorities to place him under a "special protection regime."
Inashvili is responding to a statement Gharibashvili made this week from prison, in which he asked what the real cause of death was for human rights defender Lazare Jorbenadze and said "unanswered questions" remain over a number of suicides that occurred "during the Kobakhidze-Mdinaradze administration."
"As far as I know, Lazare Jorbenadze was a confessor and communicant, and his suicide immediately aroused suspicion and raised many questions," Inashvili wrote, pointing to his regular practice of Orthodox Christian confession and communion as reason to doubt the official ruling.
She argues that Gharibashvili's letter exposes how the Mdinaradze-Kobakhidze team responded to scrutiny. Criticism, including what she calls "completely justified criticism," was treated as hostility rather than addressed, she says, adding that the team "did not try to correct its own ignorance and incompetence" and instead focused on "blaming others for the existing problems."
Assigning blame, she says, is "the least of the problems here." She predicts public questions will now follow, both about people she describes as having been "unjustly arrested" and, more seriously, about suicides that occurred during the period. She notes Gharibashvili has already raised the first such question over Jorbenadze's death, and says she does "not exclude the possibility of even faking suicide," again citing his religious observance as grounds for suspicion.
Inashvili says the prosecutor's office is "obliged to launch an investigation" into the matter. She adds that she now believes Gharibashvili's life is in danger and is appealing publicly to relevant authorities to implement a special protection regime for him.
Her statement follows a letter Gharibashvili has published, in which he said he had been wrongly accused of being behind a February newspaper article that interviewed Jorbenadze, and in which he raised suspicions over the true cause of Jorbenadze's death after learning the man died by suicide sometime after the interview ran.
