The Tbilisi City Court on Friday sentenced civic activist Nata Peradze to five days of administrative detention for pouring paint on an icon of Matrona of Moscow featuring Soviet Dictator Joseph Stalin in the Trinity Cathedral last month.

The controversy surrounding the image of the icon was initially sparked by Dean Ilia Chigladze, who shared it on social media in early January.

Peradze was absent from the court session but had posted earlier on Friday that law enforcement officers had arrived to take her to prison.Archimandrite Iovane Mchedlishvili, the priest of the Tbilisi Trinity Cathedral, stated on January 7 that the icon of the Russian saint featuring Stalin had been housed in the cathedral for several months “without attracting significant attention”.

In a Facebook video, Irma Inashvili, the leader of the pro-Russian Alliance of Patriots party, acknowledged donating the icon. This assertion was echoed by Davit Tarkhan-Mouravi, a member of her party, in a separate Facebook video.

A video circulated on social media on January 9 showed the icon being smeared with blue paint. At the time, the icon was situated on the right side of the central entrance of the cathedral, in a relatively inconspicuous location. The icon was cleaned within a few hours, and on the morning of January 10, it was relocated to a more prominent position.

Subsequently, it was revealed that civic activist Peradze was responsible for defacing the icon. On January 10, members of the pro-Russian far-right Conservative Movement gathered at Peradze’s house, verbally abusing her and journalists.

The icon was removed from the Trinity Cathedral for “restoration work” on January 17, as the Georgian Patriarchate admitted there was "no evidence" backing Stalin’s purported meeting with the saint as depicted on the icon.