New York, August 6, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists is horrified by the two-year sentence given to prominent Georgian media manager Mzia Amaglobeli on Wednesday, in a case previously denounced by CPJ and partners as “disproportionate and politicized.”
“The outrageous two-year sentence meted out to widely respected journalist Mzia Amaglobeli is emblematic of Georgia’s increasing use of authoritarian tactics to strike fear into the independent media,” said CPJ Chief Global Affairs Officer Gypsy Guillén Kaiser. “Georgian authorities must end their persecution of Amaglobeli by not contesting her appeal and investigating alleged rights violations during her detention.”
Amaglobeli’s international counsel, Caoilfhionn Gallagher, told CPJ that the journalist planned to appeal.
Police in the western city of Batumi arrested Amaglobeli on January 12 after a dispute in which the journalist slapped the city’s police chief. Amaglobeli was charged with “attacking” a police officer, which carries a minimum four-year sentence, but the court reclassified it as “resistance, threat or violence” against an official.
Amaglobeli’s lawyers and rights groups have argued that her pretrial detention and criminal charge were legally unjustified and in reprisal for the work of the award-winning independent news outlets, Batumelebi and Netgazeti, which she founded 25 years ago. Amaglobeli is the first woman journalist to be jailed since Georgia’s independence in 1991.
Authorities have failed to adequately investigate allegations that Amaglobeli was unlawfully detained hours before her arrest and that the police chief spat in her face and mistreated her during her second detention.
On July 14, CPJ and partners traveled to the prison where Amaglobeli is being held, despite deteriorating health and the gradual loss of her eyesight, and vowed to stand with her until she is freed.
Leading politicians, including Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, have sought to smear Amaglobeli by alleging that the altercation was “ordered” by the political opposition or unnamed foreign powers. In July, tax authorities seized her outlets’ bank accounts.
Press freedom has sharply declined in Georgia, as CPJ detailed in a recent submission to the United Nations Human Rights Council. Authorities have enacted a raft of repressive laws against the press, amid police impunity for brutal attacks on journalists.
CPJ emailed the press office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which oversees the police, and the Prosecutor’s Office for comment but did not receive any replies.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.