The arrest of the head of the opposition-minded Mtavari channel Nika Gvaramia is a collapse of Georgian statehood and the international community will react to it, Levan Berdzenishvili, a former dissident and politician, professor at Ilia University told Front News on Monday.

Berdzenishvili expressed his hope that Gvaramia would not have to stay long behind cells.

He suggested that based on “those testimonies we have heard and the investigation which was conducted, the judgment was a shame.”

Berdzenishvili shared the opposition’s views that the “verdict” was written somewhere else, rather than in the court, noting that the founder of the ruling party Bidzina Ivanishvili “disliked” media outlets. 

Gvaramia, who took ministerial and other top posts under the United National Movement government, was sentenced to three years and six months in prison by Tbilisi City Court on Monday for abuse of power while the former served as the director general of Rustavi 2 TV.

The convict says that he is politically persecuted.