On June 10, during the POSTV program “Political Post,” host Nugzar Khavtasi claimed that, according to a statement by German Ambassador Peter Fischer, slapping and assaulting a police officer is a criminal offense in Germany as well, but is considered acceptable in Georgia – “So what if it happened here?” Prior to this statement, the show’s guest, MP Guram Macharashvili of the People’s Power, had been speaking about recent events in the U.S., including President Trump’s use of mask bans during mass protests, and he drew parallels with ongoing protests in Georgia.
The host’s claim about the German Ambassador’s statement is manipulative. In reality, when discussing the case of Mzia Amaghlobeli, Fischer noted that assaulting a police officer is indeed punishable under German criminal law. However, he also pointed out that the Georgian journalist has already been held in pre-trial detention for four months, and this might already be considered a proportionate punishment for the alleged offense.
Journalist and founder of online outlets “Batumelebi” and “Netgazeti,” Mzia Amaghlobeli, was arrested on January 11 for slapping Batumi police chief Irakli Dgebuadze and remains in pre-trial detention to this day. The German Ambassador to Georgia has made multiple comments on this case, clearly indicating that the charges against the journalist, the pre-trial detention, and the potential sentence appear excessive and inhumane to him. On May 16, he attended Amaghlobeli’s court hearing together with Austrian MEP Lena Schilling. According to TV channel Imedi, this is the day when he made the statement that Nugzar Khavtasi used manipulatively. Specifically, the ambassador stated:
“In Germany, of course, slapping a police officer is unacceptable, but she [Mzia Amaghlobeli] has already been detained for four months. The key issue here is proportionality: does her detention correspond to the act she is accused of? Perhaps what she did has already been covered by this four-month detention.”
Accordingly, as this statement shows, he is not trying to say that slapping a police officer is not a crime in Georgia. Rather, in his view, the act committed by Mzia Amaghlobeli may not be so severe as to justify a longer stay in prison.
Since Mzia Amaghlobeli’s arrest, a number of manipulative or disinformation-laden messages about the journalist and her case have circulated. See more in our articles:
- Fabricated Post Circulates Under the Name of Tabula, Falsely Claiming That Naira Gelashvili Criticized Guram Rogava
- Who Does the Czech Embassy Refer to as the “Beacon of Democracy,” and How Does POSTV Cover Their Statement?
- Gela Mtivlishvili’s Quote About Mzia Amaghlobeli’s Arrest Spread Without Context
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