Court convicts 21-year-old arrested during protests against agents bill for 2021 incident

Tbilisi City Court on Monday convicted Lazare Grigoriadis, a 21-year-old arrested during March protests in Tbilisi against the foreign transparency bill, for stabbing his father and damaging his car back in 2021. 

Grigoriadis, who earlier admitted to the crime, with his father never asking his punishment for the specific incident, has been sentenced to one year and six months in prison. 

The youngster was arrested for violence against the law enforcement and damaging the police car at the end of March, during the protests in the capital city, where thousands of demonstrators were demanding the Parliament to recall a bill which they called a “Russian law”. 

The part of the domestic opposition and NGOs claimed the authorities had decided to punish Grigoriadis “very strictly” in a bid to discourage the young generation’s protest against its moves. 

The ruling party had to reject the bill amid the protests, claiming the international community and a “destructive part” of the domestic opposition had “misled” the public over its content, which envisaged all domestic organizations receiving more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to be labeled as “foreign agents”.