Tbilisi Court of Appeals has annulled the plea agreement reached with Giorgi Kirvalidze, an athlete who was convicted in the October 4 election-day unrest case, as the judge and prosecutors argued the defendant failed to genuinely acknowledge his guilt. His case will be returned to the first-instance court for renewed consideration.
The ruling, issued by Judge Giorgi Keratishvili on August 31, followed a request from the Prosecutor’s Office to annul the agreement, as the prosecution argued that Kirvalidze had failed to genuinely acknowledge his guilt, which it said was a necessary condition for the plea agreement.
Kirvalidze was among 34 defendants who reached plea agreements with the prosecution out of more than 60 people tried in connection with the October 4, 2025, unrest. The athlete belonged to a group of 12 who received reduced prison sentences through a June 24 court ruling, resulting in a one-year prison sentence followed by three years of suspended sentence, meaning he was expected to be released in the autumn.
At the June 24 hearing, Kirvalidze reportedly rejected the plea deal and swore at ruling Georgian Dream party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, but only after he had pleaded guilty, and the judge had already issued the relevant ruling, leaving the plea agreement in force, according to RFE/RL’s Georgian Service.
At the August 31 hearing, Kirvalidze told the court he had acted out of frustration in a June hearing and now regretted his actions, reaffirming his admission of guilt, RFE/RL reported, with the outlet citing the judge as saying that he “did not have an impression of [Kirvalidze’s] sincere admission of guilt.”
“The defendant sometimes admits [guilt] and sometimes doesn’t, which is not a serious attitude,” Roin Khintibidze, the prosecutor on the case, told journalists. According to him, “the judge must be certain that the defendant is genuinely admitting guilt voluntarily, rather than being driven by other motives. In this case, the judge could not be certain that the admission of guilt truly reflected the defendant’s will.”
Boris Chele Kurua, Kirvalidze’s lawyer, dismissed the ruling as “unfounded” and “unsubstantiated,” saying the Prosecutor’s Office sought to annul the plea agreement over the content of Kirvalidze’s remark, rather than because Kirvalidze himself had asked for the agreement to be cancelled. He said the defense would appeal the ruling.
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