Georgia cracks down on pro-EU protests
TBILISI—Seventy-five-year-old Marina Terishvili’s teenage son Mamuka was shot dead at a nationalist rally in Georgia in 1992. Now her other son, Giorgi, has been arrested for his role in protests against perceived Russian influence in their homeland.
Seven police cars pulled up at her house in the capital Tbilisi on Friday and took Giorgi, a 52-year-old taxi driver, into custody, she said.
He was placed in pretrial detention for two months for “participating in group violence” according to a rights group and local media, and faces up to six years in prison if convicted, part of a broad crackdown on demonstrators who have clashed nightly with police for almost two weeks.
The Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association rights group said he had not yet entered a plea.
“I can’t deny that he went to the rallies, because he has a brother who died on Feb. 2, 1992, and he went there in honor of his soul,” Marina said, adding that Giorgi could not tolerate the idea that his younger brother had died in vain.
Civil war
Mamuka was 17 when he was killed during the brief civil war that followed Georgia’s 1991 exit from the Soviet Union, which ended 200 years of rule by Russia.
Giorgi is among more than 400 people who have been arrested during protests against government moves to delay the country’s bid to join the European Union.
