The International Press Institute (IPI) today marks one year since the sentencing of World Press Freedom Hero Mzia Amaglobeli to two years of imprisonment in Georgia and renews our call for her immediate release.
Amaglobeli, the founder and co-director of two of Georgia’s most prominent independent media outlets Netgazeti and Batumelebi, was sentenced to two years in prison on 6 August 2025, following more than 200 days in unjust pretrial detention and a politicized trial.
The journalist, who was granted IPI’s World Press Freedom Hero award in 2025, is the first female journalist to be imprisoned in Georgia’s 34 years of independence. She has now been behind bars for a total of 19 months, during which time her health and eyesight have deteriorated.
On 12 January 2025, the journalist was arrested and held on charges of “attacking a police officer in connection with their official duties”, under Article 353 Prima of the Criminal Code of Georgia, after slapping a police chief during a protest in western city of Batumi.
The grossly disproportionate nature of the charges that followed – which carried a possible sentence of up to seven years in prison – made clear that the veteran journalist was being targeted and punished for her decades-long work and independent reporting on corruption, political repression, and human rights violations.
Since her arrest and politically-motivated prosecution, Amaglobeli has become a symbol for the fight for press freedom and democracy in Georgia, where the ruling Georgian Dream party is deepening its authoritarian crackdown on dissent.
Following Amaglobeli’s detention, senior officials from the Georgian Dream party have repeatedly smeared her publicly and pressure against her media outlets intensified.
On 18 November 2025, the appeals court upheld the two-year prison sentence, a decision IPI strongly condemned. In March 2026, the Supreme Court then refused to consider her appeal. In April 2026, the local Board of the Special Penitentiary Service reviewed Mzia’s request for conditional early release and denied it on the grounds that she “still does not repent her actions.”
A report by TrialWatch, a flagship initiative of the Clooney Foundation for Justice, concluded that Amaglobeli’s trial, conviction, and appeal were unfair, violated her right to a fair trial, and constituted an abuse of process.
As domestic remedies have been exhausted, four applications related to Amaglobeli’s case are currently pending before the European Court of Human Rights. They concern the prolonged pre-trial detention, unlawful administrative arrest and proceedings, ill-treatment and the lack of an effective investigation, and denial of fair trial rights.
- In October 2025, Mzia was granted the 2025 IPI-IMS World Press Freedom Hero award. Together with imprisoned Polish Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut, she also became the laureate of the 2025 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought as a symbol of Georgia’s democratic resilience against rising authoritarianism.
- Click here to see IPI’s comprehensive monitoring of press freedom in Georgia on the Mapping Media Freedom platform of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR)
- The MFRR consortium of European press freedom organisations have repeatedly called for Mzia’s release
- Read the analysis – Georgia: An escalating media freedom crisis
This individual statement by IPI is part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR), a Europe-wide mechanism which tracks, monitors and responds to violations of press and media freedom in EU Member States and Candidate Countries
